GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XX. January, 1842 No. 1.

Contents

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

GRAHAM’S

LADY’S AND GENTLEMAN’S

MAGAZINE.

EMBELLISHED WITH

THE FINEST MEZZOTINTO AND STEEL ENGRAVINGS,

ELEGANT EMBOSSED WORK,

FASHIONS AND MUSIC.

VOLUME XX.

PHILADELPHIA:

GEORGE R. GRAHAM.

1842.

INDEX

TO THE

TWENTIETH VOLUME.

FROM JANUARY TO JUNE, 1842, INCLUSIVE.

Painted by Alex.^r Johnston. Engraved by J. Sartain.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XX. PHILADELPHIA: JANUARY, 1842. No. 1.

THE SHEPHERD’S LOVE.

———

BY J. H. DANA.

———

CHAPTER I.

It was a golden morning in early summer, and a thousand birds were warbling on the landscape, while the balmy wind murmured low and musical among the leaves, when a young girl, attired in a rustic dress, might have been seen tripping over the lea. Her golden tresses, as she walked, floated on the wind, and the exercise had called even a richer carnation than usual to her cheek. Her form was one of rare beauty, and her gait was grace itself. As she glided on, more like a sylph than a mortal being, she carolled one of her country’s simple lays; and what with her liquid tones, her sweet countenance, and her bewitching motion, she formed a picture of loveliness such only as a poet could have imagined.

At length she approached a ruined wall, half hidden by one or two overshadowing trees. The enclosure partially concealed from view the figure of a young shepherd, who, leaning on his hand, gazed admiringly on her approaching figure. Unconscious, however, of the vicinity of an observer, the maiden tripped on, until she had almost reached the enclosure, when the shepherd’s dog suddenly sprung from his master’s side, and barking violently, would have leaped on the intruder, had not the youth checked him. The maiden started and turned pale; but when she perceived the shepherd her cheeks flushed with crimson, and she stood before the youth in a beautiful embarrassment.

“Down, down, Wallace, mon,” said the young shepherd, “ken ye not Jeanie yet—the flower o’ Ettrick? Ah! Jeanie, Jeanie,” he added—and his tone and manner at once betrayed the footing on which he stood with the maiden—“little did ye ken, when ye were tripping sae gaily o’er the lea, with a heart as light as a lavrock and a song as sweet as the waving of the broom at noonday, that one who lo’es ye sae dearly, was lookin’ at ye frae behind this tree.”

The maiden blushed again, and stealing a timid glance at her lover, her eyes sought the ground. The shepherd took her hand, which was not withdrawn from his grasp, and said,

“Ye ken weel, Jeanie dear, what ye were singing,” and his voice assumed a sudden seriousness as he spoke, which caused the maiden again to look up, although the allusion he made to the subject of her song, had dyed her cheeks with new blushes, “and I hae come hither this morning, for I ken ye passed here—to see ye if only for a moment. Ye ken, Jeanie, that we were to hae been one next Michaelmas, and that I was to get the Ellsey farm—a canny croft it is, dearie, and happy, happy would we hae been there”—the maiden looked inquiringly in his face at these words, and her lover continued mournfully—“ye guess the worst, I see, by that look. In one word, a richer man has outbid me, and so, for the third time, hae I been disappointed.” And as he said these words with a husky voice, betokening the depth of his emotion, the speaker paused, and drew the back of his hand across his eyes. His affianced bride showed the true delicacy of her mind in this juncture. Instead of saying aught to comfort him, she drew closer to his side, and laying her hand on his arm, gazed up into his face with a look so full of sympathy and love, that its mute, yet all-powerful eloquence, went to the shepherd’s heart. He drew her tenderly to his bosom, kissed her unresisting brow, and gazed for some moments in silent rapture on her face. At length he spoke.

“Jeanie,” he said, and his voice grew low and tremulous as he spoke, “can ye hear bad news? I canna bide here longer,” he added, after a pause, and with an obvious effort. The maiden started; but having introduced the subject, her lover proceeded firmly—“I canna bide here, year after year, as I hae done for the last twelvemonth, and be put off, month by month, wi’ promises that are never to be fulfilled. I will go away and seek my fortune in other lands. They say money is to be had amaist for the asking in the Indies, and ye ken we may never marry while I remain as now, with na roof to lay my ain head under, to say naething of yours, Jeanie, which I hold dearer than ten thousand thousand sic as mine. So I hae engaged to go out to the Indies, and the ship sails to-morrow. Do not greet, my flower o’ the brae,” said he, as the maiden burst into tears, “for ye ken it is only sufferin’ a lighter evil to put off a greater one. If I stay here we maun make up our minds never to be one, for not a farm is to be had for a puir man like me, from Ettrick to Inverness. In two years, at maist, I will return,” and his voice brightened with hope, as he proceeded, “and then, Jeanie dear, naething shall keep us asunder, and you shall be the richest, and I hope the happiest bride in all the border.”

The manly pathos of his words, his visible attempt to stifle his feelings, and the grief she felt at the contemplated absence of her lover, all conjoined to heighten the emotion of the maiden, and flinging herself on her lover’s bosom, she wept long and uncontrollably. Her companion gazed on in silence, with an almost bursting heart; but he knew that he could not recede from his promise, and that the hour of anguish must be endured sooner or later. Then why not now? At length the sobs of Jeanie grew less violent and frequent—the first burst of her emotion was passing away. Gently then did her lover soothe her feelings, pointing out to her the advantages to result from his determination, and cheering her with the assurance, that in two years, at farthest, he would return.

“I hae no fears, Jeanie, that ye will not prove true to me, and for the rest we are in God’s gude hands. Our lives are as safe in his protection awa on the seas as by our ain ingle-side. And now farewell, for the present, dearie—I maun do many things before we sail to-morrow. God bless you!” and with these words, dashing a tear from his eye, he tore himself from the maiden, and walked rapidly across the lea, as if to dissipate his emotion by the swiftness of his pace. When he reached the brow of the hill, however, he turned to take a last look at the spot where he had parted with Jeanie. She was still standing where he left her, looking after his receding form. He waved his hand, gazed a moment on her, and then whistled to his dog, and dashed over the brow of the hill.

Poor Jeanie had watched him with tearful eyes until he paused at the top of the hill, and her heart beat quick when she saw him turn for a last look. She made an effort to wave her hand in reply; and when she saw him disappear beyond the hill, sank against the wall. Directly a flood of tears came to her relief. It was hours before she was sufficiently composed to return home.

All through that day, and until late at night, Jeanie comforted herself with the hope of again beholding her lover; but he came not. Long after nightfall, a ragged urchin from the village put into her hands a letter. She broke it open tremblingly, for she knew the hand-writing at a glance. It was from her lover. It was kindly written, and the hand had been tremulous that penned it; but it told her that he had felt himself unequal to another parting scene. Before she received this—it continued—he would be far on his way to the place of embarkation. It contained many a sweet message that filled the heart of Jeanie with sunshine, even while the tears fell thick and fast on the paper. It bid her remember him to her only surviving parent, and then it contained a few more words of hope, and ended with “God bless you!—think often in your prayers of Willie.”

That night Jeanie’s pillow was wet with tears, but, even amid her sobs, her prayers might have been heard ascending for her absent lover.

——

CHAPTER II.

The family of Jeanie was poor but virtuous, like thousands of others scattered all over the hills and vales of Scotland. Her father had once seen better days, having been indeed a farmer in a small way; but his crops failing, and his stock dying by disease, he had been reduced at length to extreme poverty. Yet he bore his misfortunes without repining. He had still his daughter to comfort him, and though he lived in a mud-built cottage, he was happy—happy at least, so far as one in his dependent condition could be; for his principal support was derived from the labor of his daughter, added to what little he managed to earn by doing small jobs occasionally for his neighbors. Yet he was universally respected. If you could have seen him on a sunny Sabbath morning, leaning on his daughter’s arm, walking to the humble village kirk: if you could have beheld the respect with which his juniors lifted their bonnets to him, while his own gray locks waved on the wind as he returned their salutations, you would have felt that even utter poverty, if respectable, and cheered by a daughter’s love, was not without its joy.

The love betwixt Jeanie and the young shepherd was not one of a day. It had already been of years standing, and dated far back, almost into the childhood of each. By sunny braes, in green meadows, alongside of whimplin brooks, they had been used to meet, seemingly by chance, until such meetings grew necessary to their very existence, and their love—pure and holy as that between the angelic choristers—became intermixed with all their thoughts and feelings, and colored all their views of life. And all this time Jeanie was growing more beautiful daily, until she became the flower of the valley. Her voice was like that of the cushat in its sweetest cadence—her eye was as blue and sunny as the summer ether—and the smiles that wreathed her mouth came and went like the northern lights on a clear December eve. Thus beautiful, she had not been without many suitors; but to all she turned a deaf ear. Many of them were far above her station in life, but this altered not her determination. Nor did her father, though perhaps, like many of his neighbors, he attached more importance to such offers than Jeanie, attempt to influence her. He only stipulated that her lover should obtain a farm before his marriage. We have seen how his repeated failures in this, and his hopelessness of attaining his object, unless at a very distant period, had at length driven him to seek his fortune elsewhere.

We are telling no romantic tale, but one of real life; and in real life years often seem as hours, and hours as years. We shall make no excuse, therefore, for passing over an interval of more than two years.

It was the gloamin hour when Jeanie and her father sat at their humble threshold. The face of the maiden was sad almost to tears; while that of the father wore a sad and anxious expression. They had been convening, and now the old man resumed their discourse.

“Indeed, Jeanie,” he said, “God knows I would na urge ye do that which is wrong; but we hae suffered and suffered much sin’ Willie left us. Twa years and a half, amaist a third, hae past sin’ that day. Do not greet, my dochter, an’ your auld father may na speak that which is heavy on his mind,” and he ceased, and folded the now weeping girl tenderly to his bosom.

“No, no, father, go on,” sobbed Jeanie, endeavoring to compose herself, an effort in which she finally succeeded. Her father resumed.

“I am growing auld, Jeanie, aulder and aulder every day; my shadow already fills up half my grave—and the time canna be far awa, when I shall be called to leave you alone in the warld.”

“Oh! say not so,” sobbed Jeanie, “you will yet live many a year.”

“Na, na,” he answered, shaking his head, “though it pains my heart to say so, yet it is best you should know the truth. It will na be long before the snows shall lie aboon me. But I see it makes you greet. I will pass on, Jeanie, to what lies heavy on my heart, and that is, when I am awa, there will be no one to protect you. Could I hae seen ye comfortably settled, wi’ some one to shield ye from the cauld world, I could hae gone to my grave in peace. But it maun na be, it maun na be.”

Poor Jeanie had listened to her father’s words with emotions we will not attempt to pourtray. Long after every one else had given over her lover for lost—and besides a rumor, now of two years standing, that he had been drowned at sea, there was the fact of his not returning at the appointed time, to silence all skepticism—she had clung to the hope of his being alive, even when her reason forbid the expression of that hope. She had long read her father’s thoughts, nor could she indeed blame them. Their poverty was daily growing more extreme, so that while her parent’s health was declining, he was compelled to deny himself even the few comforts which he had hitherto possessed. These things cut Jeanie to the heart, and yet she saw no remedy for them, except in what seemed to her more terrible than death. Her affection for her lover was only strengthened and purified by his loss. Try as she would, she could not tear his image from her heart. Loving him thus, living or dead, how could she wed another?—how could she take on herself vows her heart refused to fulfil? Day after day, week after week, and month after month, had this struggle been going on in her bosom, betwixt duty to her father and love for him to whom she had plighted her virgin vows. This evening her parent had spoken to her, mildly but seriously on the death of her lover, and Jeanie’s heart was more than ever melted by the self-devotedness with which her gray-haired father had alluded to her want of protection in case of his death, not even saying a word of the want of the common comforts of life which his growing infirmities rendered more necessary than ever, but of which her conduct—oh! how selfish in that moment it seemed to her—deprived him. It was some moments before Jeanie could speak, during which time she lay weeping on her parent’s bosom. At length she murmured,

“Do wi’ me as ye wish, father, I maun resist no longer, sin’ it were wicked. But oh! gie me a little while to prepare, for the heart is rebellious and hard to overcome. I know you do it all for the best—but I maun hae some delay to tear the last thoughts o’ Willie, thoughts which soon wi’ be sinfu’, from my heart”—and overcome by the intensity of her emotions she burst into a new flood of tears. Her father pressed her to his bosom, and murmured,

“Oh! Jeanie, Jeanie, could ye know how this pains my auld heart! But the thought that when I die ye will be left unprotected in the world, is sair within me. Time ye shall hae, darlint—perhaps,” he added after a moment’s pause, “it were better to gie up the scheme altogether. Aye! Jeanie, I will na cross your wishes even in this; but trust in a gude God to protect you when I am gone. Say no more, say no more about it, dear one; but do just as ye will.”

“No, father,” said Jeanie, looking firmly up, while the tears shone through her long eye-lashes like dew on the morning grass, “no, I will be selfish no longer. Your wish shall be fulfilled. Do not oppose me, for indeed, indeed, I act now as I feel right. Gie me only the little delay for which I ask, and then I will do as you say, and—and”—and her voice trembled as she spoke—“then you will no longer be without those little comforts, dear father, which not even all my love has been able to procure for you. Now kiss me, for I maun go in to be by myself for awhile.”

“God bless you, my dochter, and may he ever hae you in his keeping,” murmured that gray-haired sire, laying his hands on his child’s head—his dim eyes suffusing with tears as he spoke, “God bless ye forever and ever!”

When that father and daughter rejoined each other, an hour later in the evening, a holy calm pervaded the countenance of each; and the looks which they gave each other were full of confidence, gratitude and overflowing affection. And when the daughter drew forth the old worn Bible, and read a chapter in her silvery voice, while the father followed in a prayer that was at times choked by his emotion, there was not, in all broad Scotland, a sweeter or more soul-subduing sight than that lowly cot presented.

——

CHAPTER III.

Although Jeanie was a girl of strong mind, the sacrifice which she contemplated was not to be effected without many inward struggles. But having made up her mind to what she considered her duty, she allowed no personal feelings to swerve her from the strict line she had laid down for herself wherein to walk. Daily did she seek in prayer for aid; and never did she allow her parent to hear a murmur from her lips. Yet, let her strive as she would, the memory of her lover would constantly recur to her mind. At the gloamin hour, in the still watches of the night—by the ingle-side, abroad in the fields, or in the kirk of God—on Sabbath or week day—when listening to her aged sire’s voice, or sitting all alone in her little chamber, the image of him she had loved would rise up before her, diffusing a gentle melancholy over her heart, and seeming, for the moment, to raise an impassable barrier betwixt her and the fulfilment of her new vows—for those vows had already been taken, and the evening which was to make her another’s, was only postponed until the intended bridegroom—a staid farmer of the border—could make the necessary preparations in his homestead, necessary to fit it for a new mistress, and she the sweetest flower of the district.

We are telling no romantic tale, drawn from the extravagant fancy of a novelist, but a sober reality. There are hundreds, all over this broad realm, who are even now sacrificing themselves like Jeanie. Aye! in many a lowly cottage, unrecked of and uncared for by the world, wither away in secret sorrow, beings who, had their lot been cast in happier places, would have been the brightest and most joyous of creatures. How many has want driven, unwilling brides, to the nuptial altar! Who can tell the sacrifice woman will not make to affection, although that sacrifice may tear her heart’s fibres asunder? And thus Jeanie acted. Although she received the attentions of her future husband with a smile, there was a strange unnatural meaning in its cold moonlight expression. Even while he talked to her, her thoughts would wander away, and she would only be awakened from her reverie by some sudden ejaculation of his at perceiving her want of attention. He knew her history, but he had been one of her earliest lovers, and he flattered himself that she had long since forgotten the absent; and, although at times her demeanor would, for a moment, make him suspect the truth, yet a conviction so little in unison with his wishes, led him instantly to discard it. And Jeanie, meanwhile, continued struggling with her old attachment, until her health began to give way beneath the conflict. She scarcely seemed to decline—at least to eyes that saw her daily—but yet her neighbors marked the change. In the beautiful words of the ballad,

“her cheek it grew pale,

And she drooped like a lily broke down by the hail.”

The morning of her wedding-day saw her as beautiful as ever, but with how touching, how sweet an expression of countenance! As she proceeded to the kirk, her exquisite loveliness attracted every eye, and her air of chastened sadness drew tears from more than one spectator acquainted with her history. The bridegroom stood smiling to receive his lovely prize, the minister had already begun the service, and Jeanie’s heart beat faster and faster as the moment approached which was forever after to make all thoughts of Willie sinful, when suddenly the rattling of rapid wheels was heard without, and instantaneously a chaise stopped at the kirk door, and a tall form leaping from the vehicle strode rapidly up the aisle at the very moment that the minister asked the solemn question, if any one knew aught why the ceremony should not be finished.

“Ay,” answered the voice of the intruder, and, as he spoke, he threw off the military cloak he wore and disclosed to the astonished eyes of the spectators the features—scarred and sun burnt, but still the features—of the absent shepherd, “Ay! I stand here, by God’s good aid, to claim the maiden by right of a prior betrothal. I am William Sandford.”

Had a thunderbolt fallen from heaven, or a spirit risen from the dead, the audience would not have been more astonished than by this dénouement. All eagerly crowded around the intruder, gazing on his face, as the Jews of old looked on the risen Lazarus. Doubt, wonder, conviction, enthusiasm followed each other in quick succession through the minds of the spectators. But the long absent lover, pushing aside the friends who thronged around him, strode up to Jeanie’s side, and, clasping her in his arms, asked, in a voice no longer firm, but husky with emotion,

“Oh! Jeanie, Jeanie, hae ye too forgotten me?”

The bride had fainted on his bosom; but a score of eager tongues answered for her, and in hurried words told him the truth.

What have we more to say? Nothing—except that the returned lover took the place of the bridegroom, who was fain to resign his claim, and that the minister united the now re-animated Jeanie and her long-remembered lover, while the congregation looked on with tears of joy.

The returned Shepherd—for we shall still call him so—at length found time to tell his tale. He had been shipwrecked as rumoured, but, instead of being drowned, had escaped and reached India. There he entered the service and was sent into the interior, where he rose rapidly in rank, but was unavoidably detained beyond the appointed two years, while the communications with Calcutta being difficult and uncertain, the letters written home apprizing Jeanie of these facts had miscarried. At length, he had succeeded in resigning his commission, full of honors and wealth. He hastened to Scotland. He reached Jeanie’s home, learned that she was even then becoming the bride of another, hurried wildly to the church, and—our readers know the rest.

SONNET.[^[1]]

———

BY THOMAS NOON TALFOURD.

———

How often have I fixed a stranger’s gaze

On yonder turrets clad in light as fair

As this soft sunset lends—pleas’d to drink air

Of learning that from calm of ancient days

Breathes ’round them ever:—now to me they wear

The tinge of dearer thought; the radiant haze

That crowns them thickens as, with fonder care,

And by its flickering sparkles, sense conveys

Of youth’s first triumphs:—for amid their seats

One little student’s heart impatient beats

With blood of mine. O God, vouchsafe him power

When I am dust to stand on this sweet place

And, through the vista of long years, embrace

Without a blush this first Etonian hour!

THE GOBLET OF LIFE.

———

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

———

Filled is Life’s goblet to the brim;—

And though my eyes with tears are dim,

I see its sparkling bubbles swim,

And chaunt this melancholy hymn,

With solemn voice and slow.

No purple flowers—no garlands green

Conceal the goblet’s shade or sheen,

Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,

Like gleams of sunshine, flash between

The leaves of mistletoe.

This goblet, wrought with curious art,

Is filled with waters that upstart,

When the deep fountains of the heart,

By strong convulsion rent apart,

Are running all to waste;

And, as it mantling passes round,

With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,

Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned,

Are in its waters steeped and drowned,

And give a bitter taste.

Above the humbler plants it towers,

The fennel, with its yellow flowers;

And in an earlier age than ours

Was gifted with the wondrous powers

Lost vision to restore:

It gave new strength and fearless mood,

And gladiators fierce and rude

Mingled it in their daily food;

And he who battled and subdued

A wreath of fennel wore.

Then in Life’s goblet freely press

The leaves that give it bitterness,

Nor prize the colored waters less,

For in thy darkness and distress

New light and strength they give.

For he who has not learned to know

How false its sparkling bubbles show,

How bitter are the drops of woe

With which its brim may overflow,

He has not learned to live!

The prayer of Ajax was for light!

Through all the dark and desperate fight,

The blackness of that noon-day night,

He asked but the return of sight

To know his foeman’s face.

Let our unceasing, earnest prayer

Be, too, for light:—and strength to bear

Our portion of the weight of care,

That crushes into dumb despair

One half the human race.

O suffering, sad humanity!

O ye afflicted ones, who lie

Steeped to the lips in misery,

Longing, and yet afraid to die,

Ye have been sorely tried!

I pledge you in your cup of grief

Where floats the fennel’s bitter leaf!

The battle of our life is brief,—

The alarm,—the struggle,—the relief,—

Then sleep we side by side.

E. T. Parris. Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Smillie.

HIGHLAND BEAUTY.

A STORY IN CAMP.

———

BY OLIVER OLDFELLOW.

———

“The fact is, Jeremy, I never liked the idea of writing love stories in the presence of a pretty girl, as there is always something contagious in love,—and do what I might—I have been a hard student that way—some how or other I was always apt to leave off writing, and go to the business of love-making in downright earnest,—studying from nature, you see. It somehow puts a fellow’s hand out for writing, and inclines him more to the use of his tongue, except when, by way of variation, he cooly slips his arm around the dear, blushing, unwilling creature, and drawing her gently to his bosom, as a mother would her child, smothers the ‘bliss of talking,’ as Miss Landon called it, by a cousinly introduction of lips. But,—by the prettiest houri that ever made Mussulman’s heaven!—how do you think the thing is to be managed with two of the prettiest Scotch lassies that ever inspired the song of a Burns, or the valor of a Wallace, looking you right in the eye, and one of them with the most inviting lips, too, that ever set lover’s heart on fire, and each with a pair of eyes that would send the blood tingling through the veins of the veriest woman hater that ever breathed.”

“None of your nonsense, Oliver, but for once give over the lore of talking of yourself, and let us have the story within three pages, if you expect to be out before Christmas with the Magazine! There are a host of better looking fellows than yourself have had their eyes upon the girls, and—to tell you the honest truth,—the game is above your reach.”

“By my faith in woman! Jeremy, you are as sharp this morning as a nor’-wester—I expect you have had your comb cut with one of them. Talking of cutting combs, reminds me of a story. When I was in the army!—”

“Ha! ha! ha! When you were in the army! By George! I like that part of the story amazingly—if the rest is only as good I may feel inclined to allow you half a page more!”

“Come, Jerry, none of that; I’ve known fellows talk about the army who never even heard a gun, and chaps spin out most eternal sea-yarns, that never smelt salt water, as any old tar would tell you before he had listened five minutes to the story; but I am none of your green-horns—I know what I am about when I mention war or beauty,—having seen some service in my day. I therefore commence properly—as every story should have a beginning, even if it has no end.”

“When I was in the army, you see, I became acquainted with a very sentimental fellow, about your size,—though he had rather a better looking whisker for a soldier,—who was always full of romance, and all that sort of thing,—and I do believe the chap had an idea or two of the right kind in his head, but they were so mixed up with the wrong kind, that, like the funds of a good many bankers now-a-days, they were not always ‘available.’ He had got it into his cranium, and there it would stick, that he had a little better blood in him than any body else, so that he was confoundedly careful not to have any of it spilt, and nothing but the daughter of a lord came any way near the mark to which he aspired. He used to tell a good many stories about himself, and he would tell them pretty well too, but they somehow or other had a smack of the marvellous. His stories about the doings among the gentry—the fellow, you see, had been educated by a lord, or something of that sort, and had seen a little of high life above stairs as well as below—took amazingly in the camp, especially his sentimental ones, for he had the knack of making a fool of himself—”

“But, for goodness sake, Oliver! the story!—the story!”

“The fact is, Jerry, I am pretty much in the predicament of the knife-grinder!—Story of my own—I have none to tell. But here is one of——confound the fellow’s name,—no matter.”

“Emily Melville—the only daughter of the proud Lord Melville, who was well known in the time of the wars—as the representative of the long line of illustrious Scottish nobles of that name, was the pride of the Lowland nobility, and the belle of every assembly. She was as fair as a white fawn, and scarcely less wild. Her mother being dead, few restraints were placed upon the young beauty by the old house-keeper, who, in the main, filled the place. Emily, therefore, held in proud disdain the restraints which would have been imposed by the prudes of her sex, and thought that the great art of living was to be happy. Laughter was always on her lips, and sunlight forever on her brow. She was beautiful, and you knew it, yet you could not tell the secret of it, nor, for their restlessness and brilliancy, whether her eyes were blue or gray, yet you knew that they were pretty, and felt that they were bright. Her voice was like the warble of a bird in spring, its notes were so full of joyousness; and her motion was like that of a fairy, so light and graceful, that, had you seen her tripping over the smoothly shaved lawn in front of the mansion—her auburn hair drooping in long ringlets over her snowy and finely rounded shoulders—and heard her gay glad voice, swelling out in song and happiness, you would have fancied her an angel from the upper sphere.”

“I doubt that last part, my good fellow”—interrupted a bluff old soldier—“until I had tried an arm around her, to see if she wasn’t flesh and blood, I wouldn’t a’ trusted fancy.”

“An interruption, gentlemen. You see if the story is told right, a man must feel what he says, and you’ll find out before it’s done, that I”—

“What, young man! You didn’t begin to make love to her did you?”

“Gentlemen, I must persist”—

“Well, was she in love—tell us that.”

“Love!—She laughed at it—and said, ‘she loved nothing but her pet fawn—her canary—the flowers, both wild and tame—the blue sky—the sunshine—the heather—the forest—the mountains—and it might be—she did not know—she might love her cousin Harry Hardwick, if he was as pleasant as he was when her playmate a few years ago—but he was now at his father’s castle on the mountain, and perhaps had grown coarse, boorish, or ill-mannered. She did not know therefore whether she should love him or not—rather thought she should not—but then she had her father, and enough around her to love and cherish, and why should she trouble herself about the matter.’

“You will not wonder, gentlemen, that such a creature should inspire me with love—a deep, devoted, heart-absorbing, deathless passion. I loved her as man never loved woman before. Every pulsation, every energy of my being seemed for her”—

“Of course, you’d love her!—never heard you tell of a pretty girl that you didn’t love—but give us the pith and marrow of the matter; did she return the compliment?”

“All in good time!—You see the thing might have been very handsomely managed, if it had not been for one or two impediments”—

“What in the plague does the fellow mean by impediment?”

“Hush, can’t you! He means he didn’t get her, of course.”

“Well, you see, gentlemen, there was a shocking looking young fellow of a lord, who lived upon the next estate, who got it into his head that he must take a hand in the game. To give him his due, he was accomplished, witty, had a title, and a splendid whisker, and from beginning to call every few days to inquire after Lord Melville’s health—the old chap had the best health in the world—about three times a-week, he soon managed to call the other four days on his own account, so that I found the prize in a fair way to be snatched from my grasp, and I resolved to bring matters to a close pretty soon. So one morning, when Lord Melville was out looking into parliamentary matters, inquiring into the affairs of the nations, or his own, I thought I would open the question genteely. Emily had sung for me most sweetly, without any apology or affectation, and we were now sitting chatting very pleasantly together. How easy, then, to turn the conversation in the proper channel. To discourse of green fields—of murmuring brooks—of the delights of solitude with one of congenial tastes—of the birds, the fawn, and the attachment they showed their mistress. Then, of course, she would wonder whether they really loved her, whether they knew what love was, or only felt joy at her presence, because they knew her as their feeder. Then I would say, of course they loved her, how could they do otherwise,—were not all things that approached her fated to love her. Then she blushes, gets up, and goes to the window opening on the garden—to look at the flowers maybe—I must see them too, of course, for they are her flowers. I always loved flowers, and particularly love these. Things, gentlemen, were thus progressing pretty smoothly, you will see, considering that the lady was the daughter of a lord, and of course heiress to his whole estate, when lo!—my unlucky genius as usual—the housekeeper must poke in her head, and ask if ‘anybody called.’ No! certainly not! What young lady ever called a housekeeper at such a time! Pshaw! The thing was shocking to think of! How stupid in her! The old thing had an eye in her head like a hawk, however, and saw pretty clearly how matters stood, and whether she thought that there was no chance for me in that quarter, or had some private preference of her own, she maintained her ground until I deemed it prudent to withdraw.

“Days passed away, and no opportunity was afforded me of renewing my suit. Whether the old housekeeper took the matter in hand or not, of course I cannot say; but when days began to grow into weeks, I began to feel the wretchedness of first love. Who has not felt its fears, its doubts, the torture, whether you are beloved by the object of your affection, and the uncertainty, even in your own mind, whether you are worthy of that love?—who has not felt the dread of rivalry, the fears of the effects of a moment’s absence, and the thousand untold pangs, which none but a lover’s imagination can inflict—and he a lover for the first time? It is strange, gentlemen, that I should, after this sweet interview, which seemed destined to be the last that I should have with the most angelic of beings, place myself upon the rack, and delight in the torture, with the devotion to wretchedness of a heart inspired with ‘the gentle madness,’ for the first time, of passionate, deathless love—”

“Hold up, comrade! and do give us the pith of the matter, without all this flummery. I’ve known chaps talk all day in that strain, who never had any story to tell, but would go on yarning it until roll-call, just to hear themselves talk. Now, if you got the gal, say so—if you didn’t, tell us why—and none of your rigmarole.”

“Of course, gentlemen, I did not get her, and that is the reason I am here to tell the story. Misfortunes, you know, travel close upon each other’s heels, and sure enough, in the midst of my misery, the carriage of Lord Hardwick was announced, and who should it contain but Emily’s cousin ‘Harry,’—her old playmate, and his sister. I heard the announcement, but I heard no more, until an hour or two afterwards, when, out of sheer melancholy, I had taken to the garden for contemplation and meditation, I accidentally overheard Harry Hardwick’s declaration and his acceptance, and, after half an hour of silence, a laugh by both parties at my expense.

“I had enough of the soldier’s blood in me, gentlemen, even then, to take no notice of this downright incivility and want of breeding, though I do not of course suppose that the parties dreamed that they had a listener, so I cast her off as unworthy of my love; and thus ended my first love.”

“Very sensibly done, too, my boy! I applaud your spirit. It was worthy of a soldier.”

“But, gentlemen, this was but the opening of difficulties, for I was no sooner out of this scrape than my sensitive heart must betray me into another. How all the dreams of even Emily’s beauty melted away as the mist from the hills—perhaps assisted by the knowledge she was the prize of another—when next morning my eyes beheld Arabella Hardwick. She was leaning over the back of the sofa, at the very window from which the day before I had praised the flowers with Emily. Passing beautiful was she as she stood in her virgin loveliness before me, with her highland-cap and its white plume over curls of jet, that seemed in mere wantonness to fall from beneath, over her fine neck and swelling bosom, whose treasures were scarcely concealed by the highland-mantle which so well became her. Her brow was slightly shaded with curls, while from beneath, her eyes, darker than heaven’s own blue, seemed to be melting before your gaze. Her smile was sweetness itself, and came from lips of which heaven and earth seemed to dispute ownership. Emily was seated at her side, in the act of fixing a hawk’s feather in a highland-cap for her own fair brow, yet in her eye mischief and cunning strove for mastery, and her whole face was so full of meaning that I knew that I must have been the subject of previous conversation, and I felt my face crimson before the highland beauties. I verily believe that I made an impression, gentlemen, which, had it been properly followed up, might have been the making of me; I have always fancied somehow or other that the highland beauty was rather smitten with me, for there was such a coaxing expression in her whole face, and particularly in her lips—which seemed to be begging a kiss—that I do believe that if it had not been for the presence of my old flame, ‘my first love,’ gentlemen, I should have carried the fortress by storm! but you see, as it was, I stood blushing and looking simple until, for very amusement sake, both commenced laughing, and Emily broke the ice by asking me if I had lost my tongue.

“ ‘On this hint I spoke.’—It is not necessary, gentlemen, to repeat all the fine things I said—for fine things in a sentimental way, are not relished in camp—but suffice it to say that the ground was so well marked out in my first interview, that I deemed it expedient to pop the question, ‘striking while the iron’s hot,’ you know—somewhat musty, but very expressive—yet you will scarcely believe me, gentlemen—she rejected me flat—‘because I had no whiskers.’ ”

“You don’t say that was the main objection?”

“I say that was the only objection, and to prove its validity, she married five months after, Lord Gordon, Emily’s former suitor—whose only advantage was a fine pair of whiskers—with the addition of an estate and a title.”

“But perhaps the latter had some weight.”

“None, I assure you, as I pressed the matter, and she averred, that love in a cottage with a whisker, was in every way more congenial to her taste, than the finest mansion in the land without that appendage. So you see I took to cultivating whiskers with great assiduity; but for a long time, the rascals defied all attempts to train them; the shoots were tolerably advanced in less than six months; but they were too late—for the lady was married.”

“Well, you are a cool sort of a fellow to talk of transferring your love from one high-born lady to another, with the same ease as a soldier does a feather from his cap. I suppose you finally courted the old housekeeper out of sheer revenge.”

“None of that, I assure you, for she revenged my want of attention that way, by giving Lord Melville a history of the whole matter—with trimmings.—So the old codger said I was as crazy as a bed-bug, and clapped me in the army, as a kind of lunatic asylum to recover my wits. So that’s the end of the story.”

“There, Jerry, put that in your pipe, or your Magazine, just as you like, for no story do I write for a fellow who comes to me with a piece of tape to measure the length, as if a man spun like a spider, and if it don’t fill your three pages—add a paragraph about the children.—What do ye say?”

“It’s rather so-soish at best, Oliver!—But what regiment did you say you were in?”

“Regiment—did I say anything about regiment? You must be mistaken, Jerry! these confounded soldier terms are all mouldering in my brain, these peaceable times.”

“Well, where was the army encamped?”

“At a—a place with a confounded French name—I never had any command of the cursed language, and was glad enough when we got out of the place, never to bother my brain with its name.”

“Well, the war!—In what war was it?—Let us have something to go upon.”

“As for dates and names, Jerry, I never for the soul of me, could make any headway with them. A phrenologist once told me, that for names and dates I had no development, and whenever I begin to try to think of my exploits in battle, I think the fellow was right—as I am always out for the want of names and dates. So I think it best first to tell the facts, and let people fix dates to suit themselves. So, Jerry, hand over the port—this is confounded dry business.”

“To tell you the truth, Oliver, the whole story has rather a squint, and I have half a notion that for the most of it, we are indebted to the good looks of the two bonnie Scotch lassies, and rather a marvellous imagination.”

LINES.

WRITTEN ON A PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.

———

BY MRS. AMELIA B. WELBY.

———

Hail pictured image! thine immortal art

Hath snatch’d a hero from the arms of death,

In whose broad bosom beat the noblest heart

That ever drew on earth a balmy breath;

For while amid the sons of men he trod,

That true nobility to him was given

Whose seal is stamp’d by an approving God,

Whose ever-blooming title comes from heaven.

The fire of genius glistened in his glance,

’Twas written on his calm majestic brow,

That men might look upon its clear expanse

And read that God and Nature made him so;

Yet that pale temple could not always keep

The soul imprisoned in its earthly bars,

Born for the skies, his god-like soul doth sweep

The boundless circle of the radiant stars.

How soft the placid smiles that seemed to bask

Round those pale features once the spirit’s shrine

And hover round those lips that only ask

A second impress from the hand divine!

And look upon that brow! a living light

Plays like a sun-beam o’er his silver hair,

As if the happy spirit in its flight

Had left a saint-like glory trembling there.

Yet tho’ some skilful hand may softly paint

The noble form and features we adore,

Such deeds as thine are left, Oh happy Saint!

Are left alone for Memory to restore.

And still thy virtues like a soft perfume

That rises from a bed of fading flowers,

Immortal as thyself, shall bud and bloom

Deep in these hearts, these grateful hearts of ours.

Sons of Columbia! ye whose spirits soar

Elate with joyous hopes and youthful fires,

Go, imitate the hero you deplore,

For this is all that God or man requires.

Oh! while you bend the pensive brow of grief,

Muse on the bright examples he has given,

And strive to follow your ascended chief

Whose radiant foot-prints lead to fame and heaven.

Oh guard his grave! it is a solemn trust,

Nor let a single foeman press the sod

Beneath whose verdure sleeps the sacred dust

Once hallowed by the quick’ning breath of God.

Thus in his lonely grandeur let him lie

Wrapt in his grave on fair Ohio’s shore,

His deeds, his virtues, all that could not die,

Remain with us, and shall for evermore.

TO A LAND BIRD AT SEA.

———

BY LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

———

Bird of the land! what dost thou here?

Lone wanderer o’er a trackless bound,—

With nought but frowning skies above,

And cold, unfathom’d seas around;

Among the shrouds, with heaving breast

And drooping head, I see thee stand,

And pleased the coarsest sailor climbs,

To grasp thee in his roughen’d hand.

And didst thou follow, league on league,

Our pointed mast, thine only guide,

When but a floating speck it seemed

On the broad bosom of the tide?

On far Newfoundland’s misty bank,

Hadst thou a nest, and nurslings fair?

Or ’mid New England’s forests hoar?

Speak! speak! what tidings dost thou bear?

What news from native shore and home,

Swift courier o’er the threatening tide?—

Hast thou no folded scroll of love

Prest closely to thy panting side?

A bird of genius art thou? say!

With impulse high thy spirit stirred—

Some region unexplored to gain,

And soar above the common herd?

Burns in thy breast some kindling spark

Like that which fired the glowing mind

Of the adventurous Genoese,

An undiscovered world to find?

Whate’er thou wert, how sad thy fate

With wasted strength the goal to spy,

Cling feebly to the flapping sail,

And at a stranger’s feet to die.

Yet, from thy thin and bloodless beak,

Methinks a warning sigh doth creep—

To those who leave their sheltering home,

And lightly dare the dangerous deep.

THE SNOW-STORM.

———

A MONOLOGUE BY JEREMY SHORT, ESQ.

———

It is almost twilight. How swiftly have the moments glided by since we sat ourselves by this window—let us see—some two hours since, and during all that time not a word have we spoken, although our soul has been gushing over with its exceeding fulness. It is snowing. Look out and you will see the downy flakes—there, there, and there—one chasing another, millions on millions falling without intermission, coming down noiselessly and mysteriously, as a dream of childhood, on the earth, and covering field, and forest, and house-top, hill and vale, river, glade, and meadow, with a robe that is whiter than an angel’s mantle. How ceaseless the descent! What countless myriads—more countless than even the stars of heaven—have fallen since we have been watching here! God only could have ordered the falling of that flake which has just now sunk to the earth like an infant on its young mother’s milk-white bosom. Did you not see it? There—follow this one which has just emerged from the skies—but at what spot even we cannot detect—see its slow, easy, tremulous motion as it floats downwards; now how rapidly it intermingles with the others, so that you can scarcely keep it in your eye; and there! there! it shoots to the ground with a joyous leap—and, even as we speak, another and another, aye! ten thousand thousand of them have flitted past, like the gleaming of cherubic wings, such as we used to see in our childhood’s dreams, glancing to and fro before a throne of surpassing glory, far, far away, high up in the skies.

It is snowing. Faster, faster, faster come down the feathery flakes. See how they disport themselves—giddy young creatures as they are—whirling around; now up, and now down; dancing, leaping, flying; you can almost hear their sportive laughter as they skim away across the landscape. Almost, we say, for in truth there is not a sound to be heard in earth, air, or sky. The ground, all robed in white, is hushed in silence—the river sweeps its current along no longer with a hoarse chafing sound, but flows onward with a dull, clogged, almost noiseless motion—not a bird whistles in the wood, nor a beast lows from the barn-yard—while the trees, lifting their bleached branches to the skies, shiver in the keen air, and cower uncomplainingly beneath the falling flakes. But hark! there is a voice beside us—’tis that of the beloved of our soul—repeating Thomson’s Winter—Thomson! majestic at all times, but oh! how much more so when gushing in silver music from the lips of the white-armed one beside us. Hear her!

“The keener tempests rise: and fuming dun

From all the livid east, or piercing north,

Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb

A vapory deluge lies, to snow congeal’d.

Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;

And the sky saddens with the gather’d storm.

Through the hush’d air the whitening shower descends,

At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes

Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day,

With a continual flow. The cherished fields

Put on their winter-robe of purest white.

’Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts

Along the mazy current. Low the woods

Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun

Faint from the west emits his evening ray

Earth’s universal face, deep hid, and chill,

Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide

The works of man. Drooping, the laborer ox

Stands covered o’er with snow——”

But let us away to the mountains! Far up in a gorge of the Alleghanies we will stand, with the clouds whirling wildly around and beneath, and the wind whistling shrilly far down in some ravine, which we may not see; for all around us is, as it were, a shoreless ocean, buried in a ghastly mist, from which the tall cliffs jut up like islands—and ever, ever comes to our ears from this boiling vortex a sound as of many waves chafing against the shore, like that which the priest of Apollo listened to as he walked all disconsolate, bereft of his fair-haired daughter, back from the tents of the stern Hellenes to the towers of Ilium. The air is full of snow-flakes, driving hither and thither—thick, thick, thicker they descend—you cannot see a fathom before you. Take care how you tread, for a false step may plunge you into an abyss a thousand feet plumb down. Not far from here is the very spot where an unwary traveller, on a night like this, but a bare twelve-month since, slipped from the edge of the precipice, and was never heard of again, until the warm sunny breath of April, melting the snows from beneath the shadows of the hills, disclosed him lying unburied, with his face turned up, as if in mockery, to the bright heavens on which his eye might never look again. In vain had loved ones watched for his coming until their eyes grew weary, and their hearts turned to fountains of tears within them—in vain had a wife or mother kindled the cheery fire, or smoothed for him the bed of down, to welcome him after his absence—for

“——his sheets are more white,

And his canopy grander,

And sounder he sleeps

Where the hill-foxes wander.”

We are in the mountains, in the midst of a snow-storm, and, as we look around, we feel that Jehovah, as when Moses heard the noise of a mighty wind, is passing by. There is a vague emotion of mingled wonder, fear and awe, overshadowing our soul as we stand here alone in the tempest. See how the drift is spinning in the whirlwind; and now it streams out like a pennant on the night. Hark! to the deep organ peal of the hurricane as it thunders among the peaks high up above us—listen to the wild shrieks rising, we know not whither, as if the spirits of the mountain were writhing on beds of torture, as the olden legends say, all unpardoned by their Creator. And now—louder and wilder than the rest—sounding upwards from the gulf below, a voice of agony and might—sublime even in its tribulation, awful in its expression of gigantic suffering—like that of him whom the seer of the Apocalypse beheld bound hand and foot and cast into the bottomless pit, despite an unyielding conflict of twice ten thousand years. Ruin!—ruin!—all is ruin around us. We see not the burying of hamlets, we hear not the descent of avalanches, but the sky is lit up with a wan glare, the whole air is full of mysterious sounds, and we feel, with a strange all-pervading fear, that destruction will glut herself ere morning. God help the traveller who is abroad to-night!

And now, with a sheer descent, full fifty fathoms down, let us plunge like the eagle when he shoots before the burning thunderbolt. We are on the wide ocean, and what a sight! Sea and air are commingled into one. You seem buried alive in a whirling tempest of snow-flakes, and though, as on the mountain, you hear on every side sounds of utter agony, yet, as there, the keenest eye cannot penetrate the wan, dim prospect around; but here, unlike on the hills, there is one voice superior to all the rest—the deep, awful bass of the rolling surges. And then the hurricane! How it whistles, roars and bellows through the rigging, now piping shrill and clear, and now groaning awfully as if in its last extremity. The snow is blocking up the decks, wet, spongy and bitterly cold. There! how she thumped against that wave, quivering under it in every timber, while the spray was dimly seen flying wild and high over the fore-top. “Shall we—oh! shall we live till morning?” asks a weeping girl. “We know not, sweet one, but we are in the Almighty’s hand, and his fatherly care will be over us as well here as on the land.” There; see—“hold on all,” thunders the Stentor voice of the skipper, sounding now however fainter than the feeblest infant’s cry; and as he speaks, the craft shivers with a convulsive throe, and a gigantic billow, seething, hissing, flashing, whirls in over the bow, deluges the deck, and roars away into the blackness of darkness astern. Was that a cry of a man overboard? God in his infinite mercy, pardon the poor wretch’s sins; for, alas! it were madness to attempt his rescue. Already he is far astern. Another and another wave! Oh! for the light of morning. Yes! young Jessie, thou would’st give worlds now for the breezes of the far-off land—the hum of bees, the songs of birds, the scent of flowers in the summer sunshine—the sight of thy home smiling amidst its murmuring trees, with the clear brook hard by laughing over the stones, and the voices of thy young sisters sounding gaily in thy ears. But ere morning we may all be with our brother who has but just gone from our midst. Ora pro nobis!

We were but dreaming when we thought ourselves among the mountains and on the sea, and we were awoke by thy soft voice—oh! loved one of our soul—and looking into thy blue eyes—moist, not with tears, but with thine all-sensitive soul—we feel a calm come down upon us soothing, how gently and sweetly, our agitated thoughts. Many and many a tale could we tell thee of sorrow and peril on the seas, and our heart is even now full of one which would bring the tears into other eyes than thine—but no! you tell us we are all too agitated by our dream, and that another time will do—well, well! Sing us, then, one of thine own sweet songs—Melanie!—for is not thy voice like the warbler of our woods, he of the hundred notes, the silvery, the melting, the unrivalled? That was sweetly done—ever could we sit and listen to thee thus.

“Thy voice is like a fountain

Leaping up in sunshine bright,

And we never weary counting

Its clear droppings, lone and single,

Or when in one full gush they mingle,

Shooting in melodious light!”

That is Lowell’s—a noble soul is his, and all on fire with poetry. We tender to him, though we have never met in the flesh, our good right hand, joining his herewith in cordial fellowship, the hearts of both being in our eyes the while:—we tender him our hand—he far away in his student’s room at Boston and we here in old Philadelphia—and we tell sneering worldlings and critics who are born only to be damned, that, for one so young, Lowell has written grandly; that he is full, even to overflowing, of purity, enthusiasm, imagination, and love for all God’s creatures; and being this, why should not we—aye! and all honest men beside—grasp him cheerily by the hand, and if need be, stand to our arms in his defence?

But the clock has struck six, and we will walk to the door to see if the tempest still rages. What a glorious night! The moon is out, sailing high up in heaven, with a calm mystic majesty that fills the soul with untold peace. Far away on the horizon floats a misty veil—while here and there, in the sky, a cloud still lingers, its dark body seeming like velvet on an azure ground, and its edges turned up with silver. There are a thousand stars on the frosty snow; for every tiny crystal that shoots out into the moonshine glistens all diamond-like; and, as you walk, ten thousand new crystals open to the light, until the whole landscape seems alive with millions of gems. Hark! how the hard crust crackles under the tread. If you put your ear to the ground you will hear a multitude of almost inarticulate sounds as if the sharp moon-beams were splintering the snow—but it is only the shooting of myriads of crystals. There have been icicles forming all day from yonder twig, and now as we shake the tree, you may hear them tinkling, one by one, to the ground, with a clear silvery tone, like the ringing of a bell miles off among the hills. Early in the afternoon, the snow melted on the river, but towards nightfall the stream became clogged, and now the frost is “breathing a blue film” from shore to shore—and to-morrow the whole surface will be smooth as glass, and the steel of the skater will be ringing sharp along the ice. How keen was that gust!—you may hear its dying cadence moaning away in the distance, like the wail of a lost child in a forest. Hush! was that a whistle down in the wood?

And now again all is still. Let us pause a moment and look around. The well-known landmarks of the scene have disappeared, giving place to an unbroken prospect of the purest white. We seem to have entered into a new world, and to have lost by the transition all our old and more selfish feelings, so that now, every emotion of our heart is softened down to a gentle calm, in unison with the beauty and repose around us. There is a dreaminess in the landscape, thus half seen by the light of the moon, giving full play to the imagination. The spirit spurns this mortal tenement of clay, and soars upwards to a brighter world, holding fancied communion with the myriads of beatified spirits, which it would fain believe, hover in the air and whisper unseen into our souls. Glorious thought, that God hath appointed such guardian watchers over a lost and sinful race! We would not surrender this belief—wild and visionary as it may seem to some—for all that sectarians have asserted or atheists denied. We love, in the still watches of the night, to think that the “loved and lost” are communing with our hearts—that though dead they yet live, and watch, as of old, over our erring path—that they soothe us in sorrow, hover around our beds of sickness, are the first to bear the parted soul upwards to the gates of Paradise—and that the angelic sounds we hear upon the midnight air, coming we know not whither, but seeming to pervade the whole firmament as with a celestial harmony, are but their songs of praise. Or may not these heavenly strains be the cadences which faintly float, far down from the battlements of heaven?

“Oft in bands

While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,

With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds

In full harmonic numbers joined, their songs

Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven.”

The dream grows dim, the illusion is fading, our rhapsody dies upon our lips. We hear again thy voice—Hebe of our heart!—and we may not longer tarry in the night air. And so farewell!

APOSTROPHE.

———

BY ALBERT PIKE.

———

Oh Liberty! thou child of many hopes,

Nursed in the cradle of the human heart!

While Europe in her glimmering darkness gropes,

Do not from us, thy chosen ones, depart!

Still be to us, as thou hast been, and art,

The Spirit which we breathe! Oh, teach us still

Thy arrowy truths unquailingly to dart,

Until the Tyrant and Oppressor reel,

And Despotism trembles at thy thunder-peal.

Methinks thy sun-rise now is lighting up

The far horizon of yon hemisphere

With golden lightning. O’er the hoary top

Of the blue mountain see I not appear

Thy lovely dawn; while Pain, and crouching Fear,

And Slavery perish under tottering thrones?

How long, oh Liberty! until we hear

Instead of an insulted people’s moans,

The crushed and writhing tyrants uttering their groans?

Is not thy Spirit living still in France?

Will it not waken soon in storm and fire?

Will Earthquake not ’mid thrones and cities dance,

And Freedom’s altar be the funeral pyre

Of Tyranny and all his offspring dire?

In England, Germany, Italia, Spain,

And Switzerland thy Spirit doth inspire

The multitude—and though too long, in vain,

They struggle in deep gloom, yet Slavery’s night shall wane!

And shall we sleep while all the earth awakes?

Shall we turn slaves while on the Alpine cones

And vine-clad hills of Europe brightly breaks

The morning light of liberty?—What thrones

Can equal those which on our fathers’ bones

The demagogue would build? What chains so gall

As those the self-made Helot scarcely owns

Till they eat deeply—till the live pains crawl

Into his soul who caused himself to fall!

Men’s freedom may be wrested from their hands,

And they may mourn; but not like those who throw

Their heritage away—who clasp the bands

On their own limbs, and crawl and blindly go

Like timorous fawns to their own overthrow.

Shall we thus fall? Is it so difficult

To think that we are free, yet be not so—

To shatter down by one brief hour of guilt

The holy fane of Freedom that our fathers built.

AGATHÈ.—A NECROMAUNT.

IN THREE CHIMERAS.

———

BY LOUIS FITZGERALD TASISTRO.

———

Chimera I.

An anthem of a sister choristry!

And like a windward murmur of the sea

O’er silver shells, so solemnly it falls!

A dying music, shrouded in deep walls,

That bury its wild breathings! And the moon,

Of glow-worm hue, like virgin in sad swoon,

Lies coldly on the bosom of a cloud,

Until the elf-winds, that are wailing loud,

Do minister unto her sickly trance,

Fanning the life into her countenance.

And there are pale stars sparkling, far and few,

In the deep chasms of everlasting blue,

Unmarshall’d and ungather’d, one and one,

Like outposts of the lunar garrison.

A train of holy fathers windeth by

The arches of an aged sanctuary,

With cowl, and scapular, and rosary,

On to the sainted oriel, where stood,

By the rich altar, a fair sisterhood—

A weeping group of virgins!—one or two

Bent forward to a bier of solemn hue,

Whereon a bright and stately coffin lay,

With its black pall flung over:—Agathè

Was on the lid—a name. And who? No more!

’Twas only Agathè.

’Tis o’er, ’tis o’er—

Her burial!—and, under the arcades,

Torch after torch into the moonlight fades,

And there is heard the music, a brief while,

Over the roofings of the imaged aisle,

From the deep organ, panting out its last,

Like the slow dying of an autumn blast.

A lonely monk is loitering within

The dusky area, at the altar seen,

Like a pale spirit, kneeling in the light

Of the cold moon, that looketh wan and white

Through the deviced oriel; and he lays

His hands upon his bosom, with a gaze

To the chill earth. He had the youthful look

Which heartfelt woe had wasted, and he shook

At every gust of the unholy breeze

That entered through the time-worn crevices.

A score of summers only o’er his brow

Had passed—and it was summer, even now

The one-and-twentieth—from a birth of tears,

Over a waste of melancholy years!

And that brow was as wan as if it were

Of snowy marble, and the raven hair,

That would have clustered over, was all shorn,

And his fine features stricken pale as morn.

He kiss’d a golden crucifix, that hung

Around his neck, and, in a transport, flung

Himself upon the earth, and said, and said

Wild, raving words, about the blessed dead;

And then he rose, and in the moon-shade stood,

Gazing upon its light in solitude,

And smote his brow, at some idea wild

That came across; then, weeping like a child,

He faltered out the name of Agathè,

And look’d unto the heaven inquiringly,

And the pure stars.

“Oh, shame! that ye are met

To mock me, like old memories, that yet

Break in upon the golden dream I knew

While she—she lived; and I have said adieu

To that fair one, and to her sister, Peace,

That lieth in her grave. When wilt thou cease

To feed upon my quiet, thou Despair,

That art the mad usurper, and the heir

Of this heart’s heritage? Go, go—return,

And bring me back oblivion and an urn!

And ye, pale stars, may look, and only find

The wreck of a proud tree, that lets the wind

Count o’er its blighted boughs: for such was he

That loved, and loves, the silent Agathè.”

And he hath left the sanctuary, like one

That knew not his own purpose—the red sun

Rose early over incense of bright mist,

That girded a pure sky of amethyst.

And who was he? A monk. And those who knew,

Yclept him Julio; but they were few.

And others named him as a nameless one,—

A dark, sad-hearted being, who had none

But bitter feelings, and a cast of sadness,

That fed the wildest of all curses—madness!

But he was, what none knew, of lordly line,

That fought in the far land of Palestine,

Where, under banners of the Cross, they fell,

Smote by the armies of the infidel.

And Julio was the last; alone, alone,

A sad, unfriended orphan, that had gone

Into the world to murmur and to die,

Like the cold breezes that are passing by!

And few they were that bade him to their board;

His fortunes now were over, and the sword

Of his proud ancestry dishonor’d—left

To moulder in its sheath—a hated gift!

Ay! it was so; and Julio would fain

Have been a warrior; but his very brain

Grew fever’d at the sickly thought of death.

And to be stricken with a want of breath!—

To be the food of worms—inanimate,

And cold as winter—and as desolate!

And then to waste away, and be no more

Than the dark dust!—the thought was like a sore

That gather’d in his heart; and he would say,

“A curse be on their laurels,” and decay

Came over them; the deeds that they had done

Had fallen with their fortunes; and anon

Was Julio forgotten, and his line—

No wonder for this frenzied tale of mine!

Oh! he was wearied of this passing scene!

But loved not death; his purpose was between

Life and the grave; and it would vibrate there

Like a wild bird, that floated far and fair

Betwixt the sun and sea.

He went, and came—

And thought, and slept, and still awoke the same—

A strange, strange youth; and he would look all night

Upon the moon and stars, and count the flight

Of the sea waves, and let the evening wind

Play with his raven tresses, or would bind

Grottos of birch, wherein to sit and sing;

And peasant girls would find him sauntering,

To gaze upon their features, as they met,

In laughter, under some green arboret.

At last he became a monk, and, on his knees,

Said holy prayers, and with wild penances

Made sad atonement; and the solemn whim

That, like a shadow, loiter’d over him,

Wore off, even like a shadow. He was cursed

With none of the mad thoughts that were at first

The poison of his quiet; but he grew

To love the world and its wild laughter too,

As he had known before: and wish’d again

To join the very mirth he hated then.

He durst not break the vow—he durst not be

The one he would—and his heart’s harmony

Became a tide of sorrow. Even so,

He felt hope die—in madness and in wo!

But there came one—and a most lovely one

As ever to the warm light of the sun

Threw back her tresses—a fair sister girl,

With a brow changing between snow and pearl;

And the blue eyes of sadness, filled with dew

Of tears—like Heaven’s own melancholy blue—

So beautiful, so tender; and her form

Was graceful as a rainbow in a storm:

Scattering gladness on the face of sorrow—

Oh! I had fancied of the hues that borrow

Their brightness from the sun; but she was bright

In her own self—a mystery of light!

With feelings tender as a star’s own hue,

Pure as the morning star! as true, as true:

For it will glitter in each early sky,

And her first love be love that lasteth aye!

And this was Agathè—young Agathè—

A motherless, fair girl: and many a day

She wept for her lost parent. It was sad

To see her infant sorrow; how she bade

The flow of her wild spirits fall away

To grief, like bright clouds in a summer day

Melting into a shower; and it was sad

Almost to think she might again be glad—

Her beauty was so chaste, amid the fall

Of her bright tears. Yet in her father’s hall

She had lived almost sorrowless her days;

But he felt no affection for the gaze

Of his fair girl; and when she fondly smiled,

He bade no father’s welcome to the child,

But even told his wish, and will’d it done,

For her to be sad-hearted—and a nun!

And so it was. She took the dreary veil,

A hopeless girl! and the bright flush grew pale

Upon her cheek; she felt, as summer feels

The winds of autumn, and the winter chills

That darken his fair suns—it was away,

Feeding on dreams, the heart of Agathè!

The vesper prayers were said, and the last hymn

Sung to the Holy Virgin. In the dim,

Gray aisle, was heard a solitary tread,

As of one musing sadly on the dead—

’Twas Julio. It was his wont to be

Often alone within the sanctuary;

But now, not so—another: it was she!

Kneeling in all her beauty, like a saint

Before a crucifix; but sad and faint

The tone of her devotion, as the trill

Of a moss-burden’d melancholy rill.

And Julio stood before her;—’twas as yet

The hour of the pale twilight—and they met

Each other’s gaze, till either seem’d the hue

Of deepest crimson; but the ladye threw

Her veil above her features, and stole by

Like a bright cloud, with sadness and a sigh!

Yet Julio still stood gazing and alone,

A dreamer!——“is the sister ladye gone?”

He started at the silence of the air

That slumber’d over him—she is not there.

And either slept not through the live-long night,

Or slept in fitful trances, with a bright,

Fair dream upon their eyelids: but they rose

In sorrow from the pallet of repose:

For the dark thought of their sad destiny

Came o’er them, like a chasm of the deep sea,

That was to rend their fortunes; and at eve

They met again, but, silent, took their leave,

As they did yesterday: another night,

And neither spoke awhile—a pure delight,

Had chasten’d love’s first blushes: silently

Gazed Julio on the gentle Agathè—

At length, “Fair Nun!” she started, and held fast

Her bright hand on her lips—“the past, the past,

And the pale future! there be some that lie

Under those marble urns—I know not why,

But I were better in that holy calm,

Than be as I have been, perhaps, and am.

The past!—ay! it hath perish’d; never, never,

Would I recall it to be blest for ever;

The future it must come—I have a vow”—

And his cold hand rose trembling to his brow,

“True, true, I have a vow; is not the moon

Abroad, fair nun?”—“indeed! so very soon?”

Said Agathè, and “I must then away.”

“Stay, love! ’tis early yet; stay, angel, stay!”

But she was gone:—yet they met many a time

In the lone chapel, after vesper chime—

They met in love and fear.

One weary day,

And Julio saw not his loved Agathè;

She was not in the choir of sisterhood

That sang the evening anthem; and he stood

Like one that listen’d breathlessly awhile;

But stranger voices chanted through the aisle.

She was not there; and after all were gone,

He linger’d: the stars came—he linger’d on,

Like a dark fun’ral image on the tomb

Of a lost hope. He felt a world of gloom

Upon his heart—a solitude—a chill.

The pale moon rose, and still he linger’d still.

And the next vesper toll’d; nor yet, nor yet—

“Can Agathè be faithless and forget?”

It was the third sad eve, he heard it said,

“Poor Julio! thy Agathè is dead;”

And started. He had loiter’d in the train

That bore her to the grave: he saw her lain

In the cold earth, and heard a requiem

Sung over her. To him it was a dream:

A marble stone stood by the sepulchre;

He look’d, and saw, and started—she was there!

And Agathè had died: she that was bright—

She that was in her beauty! a cold blight

Fell over the young blossom of her brow,

And the life’s blood grew chill—she is not now.

She died like Zephyr falling amid flowers!

Like to a star within the twilight hours

Of morning—and she was not! Some have thought

The Lady Abbess gave her a mad draught

That stole into her heart, and sadly rent

The fine chords of that holy instrument,

Until its music falter’d fast away,

And she—she died—the lovely Agathè!

Again, and through the arras of the gloom

Are the pale breezes moaning: by her tomb

Bends Julio, like a phantom, and his eye

Is fallen, as the moon-borne tides, that lie

At ebb within the sea. Oh! he is wan,

As winter skies are wan, like ages gone,

And stars unseen for paleness; it is cast,

As foliage in the raving of the blast,

All his fair bloom of thoughts. Is the moon chill,

That in the dark clouds she is mantled still?

And over its proud arch hath Heaven flung

A scarf of darkness. Agathè was young!

And there should be the virgin silver there,

The snow-white fringes delicately fair!

He wields a heavy mattock in his hands,

And over him a lonely lanthorn stands

On a near niche, shedding a sickly fall

Of light upon a marble pedestal,

Whereon is chisel’d rudely, the essay

Of untaught tool, “Hic jacet Agathè,”

And Julio hath bent him down in speed,

like one that doeth an unholy deed.

There is a flagstone lieth heavily

Over the ladye’s grave; I wist of three

That bore it of a blessed verity!

But he hath lifted it in his pure madness

As it were lightsome as a summer gladness,

And from the carved niche hath ta’en the lamp

And hung it by the marble flagstone damp.

And he is flinging the dark, chilly mould

Over the gorgeous pavement: ’tis a cold,

Sad grave; and there is many a relic there

Of chalky bones, which, in the wasting air,

Fell mouldering away: and he would dash

His mattock through them with a cursed clash

That made the lone aisle echo. But anon

He fell upon a skull—a haggard one,

With its teeth set, and the great orbless eye

Revolving darkness, like eternity.

And in his hand he held it till it grew

To have the fleshy features and the hue

Of life. He gazed, and gazed, and it became

Like to his Agathè—all, all the same!

He drew it nearer,—the cold, bony thing!—

To kiss the worm-wet lips. “Aye! let me cling—

Cling to thee now forever!”—but a breath

Of rank corruption, from its jaws of death,

Went to his nostrils, and he madly laugh’d,

And dash’d it over on the altar shaft,

Which the new-risen moon, in her gray light,

Had fondly flooded, beautifully bright!

Again he went

To his world work beside the monument.

“Ha! leave, thou moon! where thy footfall hath been

In sorrow amid heaven! there is sin

Under thy shadow, lying like a dew;

So come thou, from thy awful arch of blue,

Where thou art ever as a silver throne

For some pale spectre-king! come thou alone,

Or bring a solitary orphan star

Under thy wings! afar, afar, afar,

To gaze upon this girl of radiancy,

In her deep slumbers—wake thee, Agathè!”

And Julio hath stolen the dark chest

Where the fair nun lay coffin’d, in the rest

That wakes not up at morning; she is there

An image of cold calm! One tress of hair

Lingereth lonely on her snowy brow;

But the bright eyes are closed in darkness now;

And their long lashes delicately rest

On the pale cheek, like sun-rays in the west,

That fall upon a colorless sad cloud.

Humility lies rudely on the proud,

But she was never proud; and there she is,

A yet unwither’d flower the autumn breeze

Hath blown from its green stem! ’Tis pale, ’Tis pale,

But still unfaded, like the twilight veil

That falleth after sunset; like a stream

That bears the burden of a silver gleam

Upon its waters; and is even so,—

Chill, melancholy, lustreless, and low!

Beauty in death! a tenderness upon

The rude and silent relics, where alone

Sat the destroyer! Beauty on the dead!

The look of being where the breath is fled!

The unwarming sun still joyous in its light!

A time—a time without a day or night!

Death cradled upon beauty, like a bee

Upon a flower, that looketh lovingly!

Like a wild serpent, coiling in its madness,

Under a wreath of blossom and of gladness!

And there she is; and Julio bends o’er

The sleeping girl—a willow on the shore

Of a Dead Sea! that steepeth its fair bough

Into the bitter waters,—even now

Taking a foretaste of the awful trance

That was to pass on his own countenance!

Yes! yes! and he is holding his pale lips

Over her brow; the shade of an eclipse

Is passing to his heart, and to his eye

That is not tearful; but the light will die

Leaving it like a moon within a mist,—

The vision of a spell-bound visionist!

He breathed a cold kiss on her ashy cheek,

That left no trace—no flush—no crimson streak

But was as bloodless as a marble stone,

Susceptible of silent waste alone.

And on her brow a crucifix he laid,—

A jewel’d crucifix, the virgin maid

Had given him before she died,—the moon

Shed light upon her visage—clouded soon,

Then briefly breaking from its airy veil,

Like warrior lifting up his aventayle.

But Julio gazed on, and never lifted

Himself to see the broken clouds, that drifted

One after one, like infant elves at play,

Amid the night winds, in their lonely way—

Some whistling and some moaning, some asleep,

And dreaming dismal dreams, and sighing deep

Over their couches of green moss and flowers,

And solitary fern, and heather bowers.

The heavy bell toll’d two, and, as it toll’d,

Julio started, and the fresh-turn’d mould

He flung into the empty chasm with speed,

And o’er it dropt the flagstone.—One could read

That Agathè lay there; but still the girl

Lay by him, like a precious and pale pearl,

That from the deep sea-waters had been rent—

Like a star fallen from the firmament!

He hides the grave-tools in an aged porch,

To westward of the solitary church:

And he hath clasp’d around the melting waist,

The beautiful, dead girl: his cheek is pressed

To hers—life warming the cold chill of death!

And over his pale palsy breathing breath

His eye is sunk upon her—“Thou must leave

The worm to waste for love of thee, and grieve

Without thee, as I may not.—Thou must go,

My sweet betrothed, with me—but not below,

Where there is darkness, dream, and solitude,

But where is light, and life, and one to brood

Above thee till thou wakest.—Ha? I fear

Thou wilt not wake for ever, sleeping here,

Where there are none but winds to visit thee,

And convent fathers, and a choristry

Of sisters, saying, ‘Hush!’—But I will sing

Rare songs to thy pure spirit, wandering

Down on the dews to heaven: I will tune

The instrument of the ethereal noon,

And all the choir of stars, to rise and fall

In harmony and beauty musical.”

He is away—and still the sickly lamp

Is burning next the altar; there’s a damp,

Thin mould upon the pavement, and, at morn,

The monks do cross them in their blessed scorn,

And mutter deep anathemas, because

Of the unholy sacrilege, that was

Within the sainted chapel,—for they guess’d,

By many a vestige sad, how the dark rest

Of Agathè was broken,—and anon

They sought for Julio. The summer sun

Arose and set, with his imperial disc

Toward the ocean-waters, heaving brisk

Before the winds,—but Julio came never:

He that was frantic as a foaming river—

Mad as the fall of leaves upon the tide

Of a great tempest, that hath fought and died

Along the forest ramparts, and doth still

In its death-struggle desperately reel

Round with the fallen foliage—he was gone,

And none knew whither—still were chanted on

Sad masses, by pale sisters, many a day,

And holy requiem sung for Agathè!

(End of the first Chimera.)

THE QUEEN OF MAY.

———

BY GEORGE P. MORRIS.

———

Like flights of singing-birds went by

The rosy hours of girlhood’s day;

When in my native bowers,

Of simple buds and flowers,

They wove a crown and hailed me Queen of May!

Like airy nymphs the lasses came

Spring’s offerings at my feet to lay;

The crystal from the fountains,

The green boughs from the mountains,

They brought to cheer and shade the Queen of May!

Around the May-pole on the green,

A fairy ring, they tript away!—

All merriment and pleasure,

To chords of tuneful measure,

They bounded by the happy Queen of May!

Though years have past, and time has strewn

My raven locks with flakes of gray,

Fond memory brings the hours

Of birds and blossom-showers,

When in girlhood I was crowned the Queen of May!

DREAMS OF THE LAND AND SEA.

———

BY DR. REYNELL COATES.

———

INTRODUCTORY.

“ ’Tis all but a dream at the best!”

Dreams of the Land and Sea! Why should I style them dreams? They are pictures of actual scenes, though some of them relate to events removed far back in the dimness of years, and the touches of the brush have felt the mellowing influence of time.

While striving to avoid whatever is irrelevant or out of keeping, I have not endeavored to confine myself, in these sketches, within the limits of simple narrative, but have ventured occasionally to mingle facts with speculations on their causes, or to follow their consequences to probable results: nor have I totally discarded the imagination—although the scenes are invariably drawn from nature, and the principal personages are real characters—the accessory actors only are sometimes creatures of the brain. In many of the descriptions, the reader will perceive the evidences of a desire to place in prominent relief the works of nature and her God, while art, and all its vanities, is made to play a subordinate part; for nothing can be more impertinently obtrusive than the pigmy efforts of the ambitious, struggling for distinction by attempting either to mar or to perfect the plans of the Great Architect of Creation, or carve a name upon the columns of his temple.

Yet such is the social disposition of man, that no scene, however grand or beautiful, can awaken pleasurable emotion unless it is linked directly with humanity. There is deep oppression in the sense of total loneliness,—and few can bear the burden calmly, even for an hour! A solitary foot-print in the desert,—a broken oar upon the shelterless beach,—the tinkling of a cow-bell in the depth of the forest,—the crowing of the cock heard far off in the valley as we sink exhausted on the mountain side when the gloom of night settles heavily down upon our path-way,—who that has been a wanderer has not felt the heart-cheering effect of accidents like these! They tell us that, though our solitude be profound, there is sympathy near us, or there has been recently.

In deference, then, to this universal feeling, I have selected for these articles such sketches only as are interwoven with enough of human life to awaken social interest, even while grappling with the tempest—riding the ocean wave, or watching the moon-beams as they struggle through the foliage of scarce trodden forests, and fall half quenched, upon the withered leaves below.

But why should I style them dreams? There are many valid reasons. To the writer, the past is all a dream! But of this the world knows nothing, nor would it care to know. The scenes described are distant, and distance itself is dreamy! What can be more like the color of a dream than yon long range of mountains fading into the sky behind its veil of mist!

Let us ascend this lofty peak! ’Tis sunset! Cast your glance westward, where

“——Parting day

Dies like the Dolphin——.”

The sun slowly retires behind the far off hills. Inch after inch, the shadows climb the summit where you stand. He is gone!—yet you are not in darkness! His beams, which reach you not, still gild the motionless clouds, and these emblems of obscurity reflect on you the memory of his glory:—and, oh! how exquisitely pencilled in the clear obscure stands forth yon range, clad with towering trees, where each particular branch, and almost every leaf, seems separately portrayed against the paling sky,—miraculously near!

This is a vision of the past. Its strength is owing to the depth of shade,—not to the intensity of light:—for, when the sun at noon-day, poured its full tide of rays upon the scene, the sky was brighter, and rock and river glinted back the flashing beams until the eye was pained:—but where were then those lines of beauty? The details were distinct. Then you might gaze on the forest in its reality, and could almost penetrate its secret paths, despite their dark green canopy!—but where were the broad effect, the bold, sweeping outlines that now give unity and grandeur to the fading scene? The soul of creation is before you—more palpable than its mere corporeal elements are hid from sight. It resembles the master-piece of some great artist whose pencil portrays, in simple light and shade, a noble picture. All there is life! Those countenances!—those various attitudes are speaking! The shrubbery waves in the wind, and over the tremulous waters of that lovely lake, the very song of yonder mountain maid seems floating upon the canvass. Do you not hear the music? ’Tis but a dream of boyhood! Approach the painting! There is no real outline there! The brush has been rudely dashed athwart the piece surcharged with heavy colors. Masses of many hues roughen the surface, and all is meaningless confusion.

Stand back a-pace! Again the cottage, lake and mountain start from the surface, truer than truth itself.

Panting with sighs and toil, man reaches by painful steps, the mid-land height of life, as we have climbed this summit, and when fainting by the way, it has been his resource, as ours, to cast himself upon the bosom of his “mother,” earth[^[2]]—look back and dream! We have no other mother now! But when you nestled to a parent’s breast, and felt the present impress of her love, knew you its breadth and depth as this vision shows it?

Memory is like the painter or the sun-set—its images appear more real than the substantial things they picture, and glow the richer as the gloom of oblivion gathers around them.

Turn your eyes eastward! Night sits upon the landscape. No ray of the past illuminates it. The very elevation on which you stand increases the darkness with its shadow, while it widens your distance from every object vaguely and fearfully looming through the evening mist.

This is a vision of the future. That height of land which seems to reach the clouds, upon whose dusky flank the overawed imagination figures cave and precipice, torrent and cataract, is but a gentle slope, with just enough of rudeness to render still more beautiful by contrast, the village spire, the moss-roofed mill, the waving grain that crowns its very top. Such it is seen by day.

Thus, when, in middle life, man peers into the future, what frightful shadows haunt him. Coming events magnified to giants by the obscurity around, stalk menacingly forward. Danger threatens him at every step, and there is naught beyond but that black back-ground—Death! The heavens shed no light upon the future. He is descending the hill of life, and their glories are fading behind him. He strives to borrow from the past a gleam to guide him onward, but in vain! Too often his own ambition has prompted him to choose the lofty path that now condemns him to redoubled darkness. Yet, although these spectres of the gloom are most frequently mere creatures of the brain, which day-light would dispel, they govern his career and cover him with dread. The dream is truth to him—and it is only truth itself that he esteems a dream! Why can he not wait for sun-rise! Then should he see even the grave overhung with the verdure of spring, and death arrayed in all the glory of a morn of promise!

There is reality in dreams!—Come, then, and let us dream together!—our visions may be dark sometimes, but we will not forget that the sun will rise on the morrow.

A SERMON BY A MARMOT—OR THE EXILE OF CONNECTICUT.

“But come thy ways!—we’ll go along together;

And ere we have thy youthful wages spent,

We’ll light upon some settled, low content.”

As You Like It.

Every subject of observation presents itself under a variety of aspects, regulated, not only by the situation of the observer, but by his moral peculiarities also. The little animal whose name dignifies the caption of this article, though it may be better known to many of my readers by the title of ground-hog, or wood-chuck, is usually regarded as a terror, or a pest, to the farmer. Contributing in no appreciable degree to the comfort or advantage of man, and seemingly created solely for the purpose of digging unsightly holes in the ground, eating corn, and diffusing an odour by no means agreeable; it is commonly hated or despised, according to the profession of those who honor it with notice. But nothing that springs from creative wisdom is a proper subject for contempt, and good may be derived, in many instances, from the most unpromising sources, by those who devote themselves to the study of nature. Among the tribes of animals that seem to have least connection with man and his interests, there are many whose habits may teach us more effective lessons than we often derive from the homilies of more pretending instructors.

The individual wood-chuck, here introduced to the reader, was more fortunate than most of his species, for he had succeeded in winning the affections of a worthy agriculturalist, in whose family he was regularly domiciliated during the months of his activity, (for the Marmot is a hybernating animal,) and he reciprocated the attachment of his human protectors with a gratitude apparently as warm as that of any other quadruped familiar of the kitchen.

The late distinguished philanthropist, Mr. Anthony Benezette, extended his benevolence to every thing possessing life that came within the sphere of his influence, and he regularly fed the rats in his cellar, until he attracted a colony of these predatory vermin, by no means agreeable to the taste or interest of his next-door neighbor. When the latter at last endeavored to eradicate the nuisance by regularly shooting every adventurous member of the murine fraternity that ventured upon his premises, Mr. B., with tears in his eyes, protested against this murderous proceeding. “Don’t shoot the poor innocent creatures!” he said. “If thou wilt only feed them regularly every day, as I do, they’ll never do thee any harm.” Whether a similar policy had been the origin of the kindness shown our little friend, the Marmot, I know not, but he had the felicity to be born in a land where corn is cheap, and society difficult of access, and he probably owed his protection to a masculine edition of the feeling that so frequently promotes the happiness of a poodle or a parrot.

His guardian moved in a humble sphere, and most travellers might have passed the brute and his human associates alike unnoticed: but I propose to employ him as a hook, on which to hang the observations and reflections of a day in the woods, and a night in the log-cabin. It is a slender theme at best, and if discretion be the test of wisdom, I know not but our Marmot displays as high a grade of intellectual endowment as any of the other actors in the tale.

One of these was an eastern merchant, who had purchased some thousands of acres of land—wild, lonely, and far removed from practicable roads or navigable streams.—He had purchased it in utter ignorance of its resources, and was then upon his way to give it an inspection.

The next was the narrator—recently appointed to a chair in a Collegiate Institution, almost embosomed in the wilderness. He had accepted the station in a moment of depression, all uninformed of the condition of the country where it flourished, and had just arrived to blush beneath the honors of the professional gown in halls that rejoiced in a faculty—lucus a non lucendo!—of three persons, and wanted but a library, an apparatus, influence, and a class, to render it an honor to the state that chartered it!

The third was a thriving specimen of the sturdy woodsman and pains-taking farmer of the border—the intermediate step between the adventurous pioneer and the established settler. He had emigrated from the beautiful valley of the Connecticut—a valley where nature has done so much and man so little! to seek a more promising asylum west of the Alleghany Mountains, and he carried all his fortune with him. A young and lovely wife followed his footsteps from town to town—from wilderness to wilderness.—An axe was on his shoulder, two hundred dollars in his pocket, and he possessed much of that shrewdness which ordinarily passes current for talent.

He was moderate in his desires, and only took up three hundred acres to begin with; choosing a location where a rude and cellarless hut of logs graced one angle of the plot of ground,—its site selected because a spring and streamlet there supplied the most important necessary of life—good water.

Four acres of unfenced clearing marked the progress of his less prosperous predecessor in taming the primeval forest. Alas! The want of capital!—Two years of bootless labor on the part of that predecessor, left the ground encumbered still with girdled timber. The long and naked limbs of many a stately tree—all sapless now—stood pale and inflexible in the summer gale—a monument of desolation. Some rough, irregular furrows,—ploughed with borrowed oxen, and ornamented with the vine of an occasional refuse potato creeping through the starting briars and brush-wood,—alone gave evidence of human industry; for the wilderness was rapidly reclaiming its own.

There was a half-burnt brand on the deserted hearth within the hovel; but the blasts that entered freely through the intervals between the logs,—from which, mass by mass, the clay was falling;—had scattered the ashes widely over the room. A rusty tin basin on the floor, and a broken axe-helve lying athwart the doorless lintel, completed the household inventory. The ground had reverted to the noble and wealthy company from whom it was originally purchased—their funds enriched by the payment of the first instalment, and the value of the improvements added to their property.—But where is the former owner? Probably renewing the same improvident game in the wilds of Michigan or Wisconsin.

Such was the home to which our adventurous representative of the land of steady habits had introduced his amiable and delicate wife, four years before the time of our journey.

The station enjoyed many advantages. Civilization was slowly tending thitherward, and every year enhanced the nominal, if not the real value of the land. Moreover, there were many neighbors to break the tedium of life in the wilds. Nine miles to the westward—that being the direction of the older settlements,—there lived a veteran of two wars, whose pension made him rich in a country where a dollar is a rarity, and trade is carried on exclusively by barter. He was the most important man within the circuit of twenty miles; for he owned the only forge. Not even the influence of Squire Tomkins, whose aristocratical residence, five miles deeper in the forest, was furnished with the luxury of weather-boarding, and flanked by a regular barn and stables, could outweigh, in public opinion, the claims of one whose labors contributed so essentially to the every-day comfort of life, if not to its preservation, in the rude contest between the settler and nature. Public opinion did I say?—Why! besides these three high personages and their families, a migratory trapper and bee-hunter on the one hand, and a half-cast Indian basket-maker on the other, there was no public; yet here was found not only public opinion, but party feeling also—politics and sectarianism!—And where did ever society exist without them? But it is time to commence our journey.

One morning, during the autumn of 1828, I strolled into the principal store of the beautiful little village of ——, in Western Pennsylvania, to exchange the latest paper from the American Athens, for another daily sheet from the Commercial Emporium. An old friend, Mr. W——, of Philadelphia, entered at about the same time, with a map of the surrounding counties, to enquire the road to certain tracts of land but recently conveyed to him. A tall man, who had seen some forty summers, but whose keen dark eye, such as you can only find in the wilderness, seemed to have gathered a smouldering fire, beneath the shadow of the forest leaves, which few would wish to wake, stept forward to give the required information. Rude shoes, unstockinged feet, coarse woolen pantaloons, and a hunting shirt, composed his whole attire:—A rifle, with a richly chased silver breeching, swinging athwart his back, raised him above the ordinary hunter in the curious scale of conventional rank that men acknowledge in obedience to their nature, even in the heart of unfrequented woods; but the cart-whip in his right hand, and a basket of eggs hanging upon the left arm seemed irrelevant to his other accoutrements. A finely chiselled nose, verging on the Roman character, and a strong habitual compression of the jaws, marked great decision, firmness, and desperate daring—while his manly tread, in which the foot seemed to cling for a moment to the surface and as instantly rose upon the toe with a slow, but elastic and graceful motion, seemed better fitted to follow the mountain-side, or the torrent’s track, than the dull routine of the furrow. His traits and carriage, thus mingled and contrasted, would have proved a puzzle to the keenest judges of human nature,—the bar-keeper of a hotel, or the agent of a rail-road—but his origin was still distinctly marked, notwithstanding his change of residence and habits, in the somewhat sharpened expression of the face, the narrowness of the external angle of the eye, the covert curl of the lip, and the faintest perceptible elevation of the corresponding corner of the mouth. He was the Connecticut farmer of our story, on whose original stock of character four years of close communion with bears and deer, had engrafted a twig of that which graces the western hunter.

A few adroitly managed questions placed him immediately in possession of the residence, the destination, views and purposes of my friend, the merchant; and, in terms of courtesy, conveyed in phrase more polished than one would anticipate from his attire, he tendered his services as a guide, and the best his house afforded by the way, as host,—extending the invitation most politely to myself.

Having long been anxious to observe what charm in domestic life upon the borders, could so fascinate mankind as to impel such crowds of restless adventurers annually to plunge into the gloomy forest, there to remain socially buried for years, until the growth of settled population again environs them; I immediately ordered horse, and mounting with my Athenian friend, followed, or accompanied the light wagon of the settler, as the road or path permitted.

We had made but ten miles of progress, when the farms by the way-side began to appear few and far between. Around us, gathered, deep and more deeply still, the shadows of tall trees, which interlocked their arms above us, until mysterious twilight was substituted for the bright sunshine that made its existence known at intervals through openings in the foliage. These were met with only where some giant of the wilderness had laid him down in his last repose, when the slowly gnawing tooth of time had sapped his moss-grown trunk. Occasionally, the wagon jolted heavily over fallen trees, where the lightning had riven or the gale uprooted them. It seemed a sacrilege to disturb the dread repose of nature with our idle voices; and for miles we rode in total silence.—How startling, then, and how incongruous to our ears was the lively voice of our guide, exclaiming, as we passed a blaze, “we shall soon be home now!” Home! and here!—I gazed around on every hand. Over the tops of the low shrubbery the eye was carried along interminable aisles of stately trees! Interminable arches rested on their summits! An awful unity of gloom engulphed us!

“High mountains are with me a feeling,”

And no man has rioted more wildly in scenes of solitude and desolation. My shoulder is familiar with the rifle, my feet with cliff and precipice, and my arms with the torrent and breaker.—Nay! more than this! I have stood alone in cities! The limitless current of life has whirled and eddied by, and I have felt no fellowship!—have felt the sternest check of all that linked me with my kind, and buried myself in egoism! “There runs not a drop of the blood of Logan in the veins of any living creature.”

But never yet came over me the thought of home with such a thrilling shudder as when the word was spoken in those close and soul-oppressing woods! There was no resonance from the leafy ground—no echo from those long drawn gothic passages! The sound fell flat upon the ear, and its very cheerfulness of tone, deadened by the dark and inelastic leaves, resembled the convulsive laugh of terror or of pain!

Man is moulded for the contest. There is rapture in the strife, be it with physical or moral evils—a glory in the conquest, that repays the suffering! If vanquished,—he may fly and bide his time! If crushed,—he falls back upon his self-esteem, enfolds his robe around him, and dies, like Cæsar—bravely! Abroad—in calm or storm, in sun-shine or in tempest—man feels himself the ruler, and his pride supports him in the worst of woes; but at home—he is dependent! There woman rules the emotions!—Who ever knew a joy beside a gloomy hearth! Or when the wearing cares of life, or the oppression of habitual solitude has furrowed the fore-head, and fixed the features of the wife, what husband ever smiled again as once he smiled!

But away! Our path is onward!—soon we passed along the margin of a precipitate descent, and the day burst in upon us, presenting a momentary view of a long range of hills, over which the fire had swept in the preceding year. Brown furze and blackened masses of charcoal covered the slope for miles, with here and there a waving line of foliage climbing the ascent, wherever some highland rivulet had checked the progress of the flames, and preserved the grass. I had thought that Nature furnished no more spectral object than a girdled tree in a barren clearing; but the tall gnarled trunks, with charred and stunted limbs, that sentineled that ruined hill-side were more spectral still!

Descending the hill, the forest again closed around us: but presently we entered the track of a tornado—a wind-fall. It had traversed a forest of pines—and, for about two hundred yards in width, had made a passage through the woods, as straight and regular as art could have rendered it. On either hand—far as the eye could reach—arose the unbroken wall of verdure, a hundred feet in height, while in the midst, the vision stretched away over an almost level carpet of scrub-oak and whortleberries, forming a vista of unparalleled beauty; one which would have graced the palace-grounds of an emperor. Not a stump, a root, or tree was visible in all the range of sight. “God made this clearing,” I remarked. The charm of silence was broken by the comment, and the conversation immediately became general.

We had ridden about three miles farther, when the road, if road it could be called, forked suddenly; and, turning to the left, we found ourselves in front of the cottage of our host. It deserved this title richly; for never, in my many journeys beyond the margin of a regular American forest, have I seen more neatness and propriety, than was here displayed in all the accidents of a residence of logs. True! there were none of those vines and graceful shrubs that beautify the grounds around a thrifty cottage in New England; but, even here, a garden was attempted. The building, two stories in height, stood near the summit of an acclivity which formed a sort of irregular lawn, and was actually shaded by two stately trees!—the only instance of such preservation I have witnessed in the wilds of Pennsylvania.

On the right, at a decent distance from the house, were a stable with a loft, and several stacks of hay; and on the left, a natural meadow, of some ten or fifteen acres, had been cleared of brush and sedge, and furnished ample pasturage for four handsome cows. This, with twelve acres of upland, formed the extent of the clearing. Several sugar maples were scattered about the lawn, and a few young fruit trees ornamented the arable land behind the house.

Here, then, was comfort—almost the aristocracy of the woods! We drove rapidly to the door, but the sound of wheels had already drawn the family without the house. The wife, a pale and delicate woman, about twenty-eight or thirty years of age, held in one hand, a bare-foot boy of three; while a little girl, still younger, folded herself in the skirt of her mother’s woollen frock—her snow-white head, and light-blue eye peeping out fearfully from her concealment, as we dismounted. A stout lad, employed by the farmer, took charge of our horses, and we were presented to our hostess.

“We have but poor accommodations to offer the gentlemen, John! but they are welcome to what we have, such as they are. You are the first strangers from the old settlements I have seen since we came to this clearing! Were you ever in Connecticut?” Anxiety and hope were most plainly depicted in the care-worn face of the speaker. I could not bear to reply in the negative, and evaded the question by noticing the children as we entered the house. Here, my companion was surprised at the progress that had been made in four short years by the labor of a settler of such slender means. Six decent chairs and a cherry-wood table ornamented the apartment—a well-made dough-trough, with a wide and smoothly planed top, served the purpose of a side-board—a large cup-board, with curious, home-made wooden locks and hinges, occupied one corner, and a rude settee contained, beneath the seat, a tool-chest and a receptacle for table-linen. The ample fire-place, with its wooden chimney, was festooned with strings of venison, hung up to smoke in pieces, and the roughly plastered wall was ornamented with two rude engravings, in domestic frames—Adam and Eve driven from Paradise, and the victory of Lake Erie. To these was added a printed copy of the Declaration of Independence. A Bible stood open upon the table when we entered, and a prayer-book, Young’s Night Thoughts, The Lady of the Lake, and a few torn old numbers of a monthly magazine, adorned a shelf above the fire. We missed the usual utensils of the cuisine, but these we afterwards discovered in a more fitting place. The universal ticking of the wooden clock was heard; but whence it came, we knew not, until the hour for retiring. It stood upon the stairway.

Hanging his rifle and powder-flask on the wooden hooks, depending, according to custom, from a beam, our host remarked that we were dusty with travel.

“Tin is scarce with us here, gentlemen! and crockery is brittle,” said he; “so if you wish to wash your hands and faces, and will pardon our wild ways, follow me to the cellar, and you shall be accommodated!”

Taking a coarse but clean towel from the chest in the settee, he opened a door beneath the stairs, and descended; leading the way on this singular excursion. A cellar is a luxury in the simple cabin; but here we were provided with an apartment more complete, in its conveniencies, than those of older countries, the floor being well levelled, and the walls faced with stones of ample size. The settler had formed, in one corner, a large cavity about three feet deep. This was lined with mortar, and paved with smooth, round pebbles from the brook. A tunnel, with a wooden trunk and sliding flood-gate, about four inches square, led from the bottom of this basin, through the foundations of the wall, to the bed of a rivulet at some distance on the lawn. The greater part of the waters of a spring, which rose very near the house and fed this runnel, being diverted from their original course, were conveyed through hollow logs, cleaned out and smoothed by burning, through the wall of the cellar, about four feet above the floor, and fell in a beautiful cascade into the basin below. But our host was far too fertile in resources to permit the whole of the current to take this direction. A well made milk-trough, constructed of timbers, some of which betrayed more intimate acquaintance with the axe than the plane, occupied nearly the whole remaining portion of that side of the cellar which corresponded with the earthen basin. It was supplied with water by means of a small canal composed of pieces of bark suspended from the beams above, and capable of being projected into the cascade, so as to receive any desirable portion of the falling fluid. Another tunnel, communicating with the first, carried off the surplus. As we viewed these curious results of Yankee ingenuity and perseverance, several fine speckled trout were seen disporting among pans or crocks of the richest milk and cream, into which, we were informed, they sometimes leaped, to the no small discomforture of the tidy house-wife, when in their hide-and-whoop gambols, their daring over-acted their discretion. Here, then, we found, combined by the most simple means, the luxury of the washing-room, the drain, the bath, and the milk-house. Nor was this all! The waters of a spring, when flowing pleno rivo, never freeze. They carry with them, for a time, the heat which is the expression of the mean temperature of the earth, and share it with surrounding objects. The very stream, that thus contributed to his domestic comforts, and, as we afterwards discovered, rendered, in its excess, services equally important to his cattle in the farm-yard, preserved his stock of necessaries from the effects of frost, and contributed to lessen the exertions required to procure fuel for the long and dreary winter. These arrangements rendered our host still more an object of curiosity and interest—for seldom had we seen such striking evidences of philosophical deduction in house-hold affairs:—and we could not avoid the hope, that the permanent enjoyment and gradual increase of the comforts created by his genius, might be his ultimate reward. But, alas! the prevalent disposition of his tribe, when once removed from home, is—roving! Never contented with the status quo—or satisfied with possession; they leave the enjoyment of ease for the hope of wealth, and are ever ready to sacrifice reality for a dream. Yet, it was not for us to censure our host severely, should he ultimately pursue the course so admirably described in one short technicality of the American woods-man—“Flitting!” Had we not both been flitting ourselves!—the one for honor, and the other for gold! My gown and my friend’s land were of equal value, and both had been purchased at the expense of solid sacrifices; but little does it concern us now, that the progress of population has thrown the former over shoulders well clad in broad-cloth, bought with the surplus of a decent salary, or that the other is studded with profitable farms! In many parts of America, twelve years form an age in human affairs, and, in western Pennsylvania, we are of the last!

Our ablutions completed, we returned to the sitting-room. The tea-table was spread with a tidy cloth, and a smoking pot of Liverpool ware made its appearance, replete with a beverage, by the name of tea; though, by the test of the olfactories, it might have been supposed some compound discovered among the ruins of the last Piquot village, in the days when the venerable Mr. Hooker first raised the standard of his faith among the ancestors of her whose hand distilled it.—Peace be with the spirit of the good old man! Long since our journey, I have gazed, as a stranger on his venerable tomb-stone in the central church-yard of Hartford, and felt at the moment,—it may be with some bitterness—that the descendants of his flock had lost but little in frankness and hospitality, by being transplanted to the Wilds of the west! But revennons ou nos moutons.[^[3]]

The table was soon amply furnished with preserves, in nameless variety, formed from the wild fruits of the neighbouring woods, by the aid of maple sugar. The unvarying hard-crusted pie, sweet, well-baked corn-bread, and the constant attendant of the lighter meals in New England, the fried potato, completed the repast. We were seated, and—after a well-spoken grace—a service which the really respectable exile of Connecticut rarely neglects in any of the changing scenes of life—we did it ample justice.

Economy of light is a matter of serious importance in the log-cabin; and after tea, we gathered round the blazing hearth, (for the autumnal nights were beginning to be cool,) adding, occasionally, a pine knot from a group collected in the corner of the fire-place, by way of illuminating an idea or a face, whenever the subject-matter of the discourse became peculiarly interesting.

Quick and puzzling were the questions with which our hostess plied us, on all things relating to the “old settlements,” as she already styled the sea-board;—for the language and habits of the “far west,” are still strangely preserved in these mid-land wildernesses, over which the genius of civilization has bounded, to wave his omnipotent wand over the regions of the setting sun, like the last of the mammoths when he disappeared from the banded hunters of the olden time.

For a while, something like the liveliness of earlier days, stole over the features of the querist, which were fast settling into the habitual gloom, that gives character to the physiognomy of the recluse and the blind. But whatever direction might be given to the discourse, in a few moments it was sure to centre in Connecticut; until, evasion proving impracticable, we were compelled, reluctantly, to confess that our travels had never extended northward or eastward of the Housatonic—the American Tweed.—A deep sigh succeeded this announcement, and our hostess drew back her chair within the shadow of—what shall I call it?—jams, properly so styled, the fire-place had none! Its sides were formed of short, projecting logs, about three feet in length, piled, one above another, interlocking, by deep notches, with those which formed the walls of the building, at one end, and at the other, secured by short cross-sections of a smaller tree, similarly notched, set thwartwise between their projecting extremities, and bolted with strong wooden pips. This structure supported the ample chimney, which was constructed in like manner, and shared with it the usual protection against fire, a thick internal coat of clay, admixed with a very little lime. These chimney sides formed deep recesses on either hand, in one of which, the cup-board was accommodated, while the other was graced by the dining-table.

Near to one of these shaded recesses, our hostess drew her chair, and left the conversation, for a long time, to her husband.

He inquired, with an interest, seemingly as intense as a statesman, into the politics of the East, with the tenor of which he had contrived to keep pace astonishingly, when his isolated position is considered. I was curious to know how he managed to obtain such accurate information as to men and measures at the seat of government, in the midst of so many obstacles and such untiring agricultural efforts as his rapid improvements must have demanded. His reply furnished a melancholy proof of the natural disputatiousness of our species, while it illustrated the pertinacity with which a mind, once awakened to party feelings, will cling to its old friendships and antipathies when all interests in the result have ceased.

“Why,” said he, “for a while it was easy enough; for the Post rides through here once a week, and leaves a New York paper to Squire Tomkins—so the winter I first came to these clearings, I used to walk over to read the paper every other Saturday afternoon, except when the snow was too deep, and came back on Sunday after dinner—so I learned what was going on pretty well. And sometimes one or other of the old blacksmith’s boys—that’s his grand-children!—for his two sons have gone off to Illinois—would come over of odd Saturdays, a horse-back—for the old soldier kept a horse—he’s been many years in these parts, and has cleared and sold three farms, before he fixed where he is—and he’d take up Mary behind him, and ride over to the squire’s—for one of us had to stay and tend the cow and feed the pigs; so we could not both go together—and bring her back again the next day.—And a great treat it was to Mary!—for sometimes she would see something in the paper about Connecticut.—She used to teach school in Connecticut for a while.—Poor Mary! she had a better education than I had—though mine wasn’t a bad one, for a common school, the way the world goes; and I used to be able to say my say with any body; but somehow these woods are so lonely, that I’m out of practice.

“Poor Mary! her heart’s in Connecticut still, though she never tells me so,—but she looks it sometimes—except may-be about Thanks-giving day,—and then she can’t help saying it too! I’m sometimes a’most sorry she ever married such a wild and wandering fellow as me.”

“Why, John!”—in a tone of the tenderest expostulation, sounded from the corner. Almost unconsciously, I threw a pine knot on the fire, and the sudden flame lighted up a countenance, which would have reassured the most desponding husband. All traces of the inanity of solitude were gone; and over the cloud of sorrow, in which early recollections had veiled the features,—even while the tears of memory were starting from the eye,—the moon-beam of unalterable love poured its silvery light, and the pride of the wife spoke plainly in the curve of a lip already raised and trembling with affectionate reproach. The moisture lingered threateningly upon the lids, but did not fall!—It paused a moment, as in doubt, what emotion called it there, and then retreated to its source.

The husband’s face was wreathed in smiles; his voice became firmer; his language lost its parenthetic confusion on the instant, and he resumed his discourse.

“Well! well! It’s all my fault, if fault there be. She never had a fault! and she’s a blessing that would pay for twenty thousand faults of mine! There, Mary! Put the little ones to bed in the loft, and hear them say their prayers.” He dismissed them with a parting kiss, and when his wife retired—continued his narrative.

“The squire and I were friends, all through the winter and spring. He and his two sons, with the blacksmith’s boys, and three men from the furnace ten miles down the stream, assisted me to build my house; and I borrowed a horse from the smith and a wagon in town, to bring my lime for the plastering; so, when my new house was finished, we turned the old one, that I told you of as we came along, into a right good stable. I had laid up a full supply of provisions in the old house, the fall before,—bought me a plough and some tools,—felled a good deal of valuable pine timber, and put the four acres of clearing into winter grain. With the first spring-floods, I floated the pines, by the help of the squire’s oxen, and carried enough down to the saw-mill, (it’s only twelve miles,) to bring me a good round sum; and then I had money enough to pay my first instalment, buy me another cow and a pair of oxen, and pay my way till harvest, without draining all the savings I brought out with me. In the winter, I had also got three acres girdled, and the meadow half cleared; for it wanted but little attention; so, as my potatoes turned out uncommon well, and every thing prospered—I bought me a horse and wagon in the fall, and saved just enough to pay the second instalment;—trusting to Providence and the stores for the little we should want to buy next season.

“But this is not what I was talking of—I had like to have forgot the squire!—We got along very well till June or July—when we were mowing the meadow.—Yes! it was in July.—And the squire was a churchman and a democrat, but I was a federalist and a congregationalist—I did not much mind his jokes about the pilgrim fathers, though he said the Piquots were better men than those that planted the state; and laughed at them for hanging the Quakers in Boston. For the squire was a well read man before he came to the west—and he hated Connecticut, because he came from Lancaster county, and his father was killed in a quarrel with the settlers in Wyoming, long after the troubles were over. But when he said that Jefferson was a better man than General Washington, I could not stand it, and we quarrelled. I said what no Christian should say, and what I wont repeat;—so the squire and I have never spoken since, except when poor Mary was taken down! and then I had to speak; for there was no other woman within ten miles, and no doctor but a quack, within twenty-five. But Mrs. Tomkins is a nurse and a doctor both—God bless her!

“I’m getting to be very comfortable now, for I’ve got every thing around me that a man can desire in the woods, except money; and I’ve little use for that except to pay the last instalment; but I can’t bear to keep that woman so lonely and sad for want of company! The old soldier’s daughter comes over to see us once a month; but that is little for one who used to have a dozen young friends always around her in Connecticut, even if she was poor. To tell the truth, though the woods are full of venison and wild turkies, and quails and squirrels to be had for the shooting, and though Tom can catch a mess of trout in the milk trough at any time,—for he lets his line run into the tunnel and there seems to be no end to them—yet I can’t help thinking that if I had laid out my three hundred dollars of hers and my savings in old Connecticut—if I had worked half as hard there as I have done here, and she had gone on teaching school, we should both have been happier and richer than we are now. So I think I shall soon pull up stakes, sell out, and go to the prairies, where God makes the clearings, as you said, on the road—and it’s real hard work for a man, I can tell you!”

This last remark threw me into a revery of no pleasing nature; and I, in turn, retreated into the shade, as the light of the pine-knot subsided and the wife reëntered. I was dreaming of the future, when, the buoyancy of early manhood being over, stubborn habit would compel our really worthy host after all rational motive for change should have flown!—“Thou art one of a genus,” I mentally ejaculated. “The mark of the wanderer is on thy brow—

“For thus I read thy destiny,

And cannot be mistaken.”

There was much conversation afterwards; and at intervals I gleaned the strong points of his history, and that of her whose fate he now controlled. But I was busy with my dream! Peering into the far off future, I saw him in the last of his flittings!—deserted by those who should be the props of his age, but whose youthful fire would not permit them to remain inactive in the wilderness, after pictures of eastern wealth and luxury, clad in all the glorious hues of memory, had been rendered familiar as nursery tales by their suicidal parents. I saw him in the evening of his days—and where?—seated by his feeble and exhausted, though still affectionate partner, at the door of an ill-provided cabin, far in the north-west—Far beyond the present range of the pioneer! The gloom of night was slowly dropping its curtain around them, though the phosphorescent snow gave dim illumination to the broad and trackless expanse of the prairie—trackless then, even by the exterminated Buffalo. There were none even of the few conveniences of his present wood-land home; for the genius and the skill which had once enabled him to bend the stubborn gifts of nature to his will, were chilled by the frosts of age.

I could even hear the voices of future years stealing on the autumnal night breeze, as it moaned through the rough and ill-joined casement where we sat.

“Why, John, this is Thanks-giving night! Where can our oldest boy be wandering now? He was just thirty yesterday, and we have not heard from him these six years!—Not since you made your last flitting, John! He was always a good boy, and I’m sure he has written to us! John! you may depend upon it, there must be a letter in the office at St. Louis—St. Louis, was it? or was it Chicago? My memory begins to fail me so! He sent us fifty dollars the last time, when we lived in Wisconsin, away down in the States. It must have been in Chicago; for it was there he wrote before!”

“Ah! Mary! Mary! boys forget their mothers and their fathers too, when they are old and feeble! He is getting rich somewhere far over yonder, and little he thinks of us! But there’s little Mary, where can she be? Her husband was just gone to New Orleans with a load of furs when the hunters went down to the bluffs in the fall, and they sent our letter after them—but may-be she never got it!”

“Yes, it’s Thanks-giving night, Mary! and if I had loved the graves of my parents as I ought, we should not be here, where our children that are away will never find our own. Well, well! I’m too old to hunt, and if the trapping turns out no better than it did last year, we’ll have our next Thanks-giving, Mary, where there will be no end to it! and sure you have earned the right to be at rest, by your faithfulness, however it may go with me!”

While this picture was floating through my mind, I had learned from occasional sentences, that our host was the son of parents of respectability; but his father had foolishly left the agricultural life, which he understood and was pursuing prosperously, for cities and merchandize, for which he had no talent. He died a bankrupt, leaving one son at the age of eight years and a daughter of eighteen. The latter had been affianced, during her father’s prosperity, to the son of a man of wealth; but that wealth had been the result of the closest selfishness in early life. As usual, the native vulgarity of feeling and heartlessness of character which had caused his unwonted and undeserved pecuniary success, remained unchanged in the days of his spurious social elevation. He forbade the further visits of his son the moment the disaster of the parent of his intended wife was known. He forbade it suddenly and without a warning. The consequences were such as are almost too frequent to attract attention. A lovely woman pined a few years over the ill-requited needle, and died “in a decline.”

“A young man about town” looked sad for a few months, and then married an heiress to extend the curse of hereditary meanness.

In the little village where our host was reared, by a near relative in the original occupation of his father, he formed his attachment to his present companion: She was then a teacher, starving upon the liberal salary that rewards the principal of a female common school in “the State where education is universal.” To marry at home would have required sacrifices of conventional rank on the part of his intended, to which his pride would not suffer him to reduce her; for how could he ask her to share the fortunes of a laborer in the field? To wait until their united efforts would enable them to secure a farm, was more than his impatience could endure. In evil hour a bright dream of the west had thrown him into the wilderness, and rendered him dependent upon the accidents of sun and rain for protection against the tender mercies of a Land Company—which calculated upon the profits of indiscretion and extended credit willingly, while accepting actual payment with regret. His energies might probably bear him through his trials, could he be contented to avoid expansion until the flood-tide of civilization might have time to reach his retreat, but already he was restless, and his eyes were directed to the fatal west—and it appeared painfully probable that a few short years would find him again dependent on his axe, or a prey to larger speculations in a deeper wilderness.

We soon retired to our comfortable cat-tail beds, by the light of a domestic candle, regretting that our kind entertainers refused us the extempore lodging on the floor to which, in true woodland courtesy, they condemned themselves.

It was long before sleep relieved the unpleasant thoughts awakened by the conversation of the evening. My mind wandered over many a tale of the woods, in which blighted hopes and ruined prospects constituted the prominent features. True, I had seen much of happiness in similar situations,—for Providence has constructed some one of the human family peculiarly fitted to occupy each niche in the great temple of society,—but how frequently the abuse of the inestimable privilege of free will renders it a curse instead of a blessing. I sometimes think that the exceptions constitute the rule, and that a small minority only ever accomplish the destiny for which they were created. Jarring, confusion, and disorder mark every page of nature,—every paragraph of history! Here was a man of spirit, enterprise, energy, and talent, who had fled from the only field where happiness was proffered at a slight expense of pride, to waste his powers upon a wilderness for the benefit, in all probability, of certain merchants and capitalists in Holland. He dragged down with him an amiable being who was fitted by her moral excellencies, and even by her education, humble as it may have been, for a far wider sphere of usefulness; and why? Because he could not bear to ask a fond and loving woman to descend to a station which she would have gloried to share with him!

How little men know of the true character of the self-sacrificing sex, until the frosts of old age begin to crown their venerable fronts, and they find their knowledge useless!

It is said that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous; but, although legend upon legend crowded on my memory, the pathetic had still the ascendancy, and I entertained my companion with stories, not all of which were colored in rain-bow hues, until the moon-light deserted the casement, and the fatigue of nearly forty miles of travel enabled us to sink into repose. As one of these recollections is pertinent to the occasion, and illustrative of life in the woods, it may not be amiss to offer it to the reader. It furnishes an instance of indiscretion which, could the effect have been foreseen, would be esteemed an act of cruelty worthy of the worst days of the inquisition. And yet it was perpetrated by a female—by one who should have known the peculiarities of her sex!

“Our highly intelligent friend, Mc——,” said I, “has resided for some years in the town of ——, and has become familiar with the independent life of a western village. She owns a considerable tract of wild land on the New York border, and, as her husband’s eccentricities (for he is an American Old Mortality) are equal with his fame and classical acquirements, she thought it best to proceed by herself, on horse-back, to visit the property and examine its resources. After journeying for several days by every stages and frequented routes, she took an appropriate path and plunged into the forest.”

After much difficulty and fatigue, she arrived at the cabin of a squatter, which she knew to have been located for many years on or near her line. The visit of the owner was not unsafe, for the man was a bee-hunter, trapper, and timber thief of the most gentle manners, and utterly despised all efforts at clearing beyond the acre. His pigs—his only stock—ran wild in the woods, and he cared nothing for real estate so long as there were trees left for a deer-cover, timber to be stolen, bees to be limed, and a bounty for wolves. He looked upon a new settlement as only another market and prowling ground, incommoding him in nothing, and likely to increase the dainties of his larder by an occasional chicken and eggs. He lived for the present—dreamed neither of the past nor the future—and nothing but habitual laziness prevented him from being perpetually peripatetic. He was absent from home when Mrs. —— arrived, and she was received with back-woods hospitality by his wife;—for even this creature, whose only beverage was “Le vin ordinaire de ce pays ci—un liqueur abominable qu’on appelle Ouiskey!” actually had a wife, and an affectionate one, who had resided on or near the spot since the days of Jefferson! After a comfortable night of repose upon a bundle of dried leaves, in her riding suit, Mrs. —— arose, and made preparations for viewing the property. No lady neglects the toilet, even in the most distressing circumstances. I have several times heard death preferred to the loss of a fine head of hair, in the wards of a hospital, and it is not to be supposed that Mrs. R. was unprovided with a looking-glass. She proceeded to withdraw the several appurtenances of the dressing-room from her well-stored portmanteau, narrowly and wonderingly watched by her kind hostess. But the instant the mirror appeared, the lonely denizen of the wilds exclaimed, with startling energy—

“Oh! dear Mrs. R.! That’s a looking-glass! Do let me look in it! I have not seen my face plainly for thirty years! I go down to the spring sometimes and try to see myself; but the water is so rough that it don’t look at all like me! Do let me look at it! Do now!”

The glass was handed to the delighted woman. She cast but one glance upon it. The mirror fell in fragments on the floor, the unfortunate creature fainted and fell back on the rude bench behind her, and Mrs. R. visited her ample domain, that day, with a head half combed.

The very early breakfast the next morning was a cheerful one. When it was completed, we rode over by the squire’s, with our host for a guide, and after proceeding about three miles into the woods, tied our horses at the termination of all signs of road, and advanced on foot. We soon separated, the merchant and the farmer to estimate the chances of water-power, iron beds, timber, and lime-quarries, and I, with my host’s rifle, a paper of pins, a botanical box, and a pocket insect net, to my favorite pursuits. We agreed to rendezvous at the place of parting when the hour of three arrived; and, being all familiar with the art of navigating the forest, there was no danger of a failure in meeting the engagement. When we returned from our excursions, and I observed the disappointed look of my Athenian friend, I felt myself the richer, notwithstanding he styled himself possessor of five thousand acres, and I bore upon my shield the footless birds of a younger son; for my hat was serried with glittering insects, impaled upon its crown and sides; my box was stored with rarities, and, on a hickory pole across my shoulder, hung a great horned owl, a hawk, twelve headless black squirrels, and a Canada porcupine!

We stopped at the squire’s for a dinner; and, strange to say, succeeded in inducing our host to bear us company, despite his political aversions; so that we have reason to believe that our visit was successful in settling a feud which had seriously curtailed the comforts of both parties for nearly three long years. As we were rambling over the ground, while our meal was in preparation, our attention was called to a tamed marmot or ground hog, that had been a favorite of the family during several years. He had just commenced burrowing a residence for his long months of hybernation—for the coolness of the nights forewarned him that the period of activity was nearly over. By the orchard fence, upon a little mound commanding a broad view of the squire’s improvements, he sat upright on the grass, by the side of the yellow circle of dust which his labors already rendered sufficiently conspicuous. The sun obliquely shed a milder and more contemplative light over a scene softened by the autumnal haze. The foliage wore the serious depth of green which precedes the change of the leaf, and, on the higher ground, small patches of yellow, red and brown began to vary the uniformity of the forest. He sat with his fore-paws gently crossed upon his bosom, like an old man reposing at evening by the door of his cottage, calmly and peacefully reflecting that the labors of life were drawing to a close. The autumn wind soughed by, with a premonitory moan, and our philosophic friend threw up one ear to drink the ominous sound, shook his head, as it died away, with an obvious shudder, as though some chilly dream of winter disturbed his repose, and turning slowly round, commenced digging deliberately at his burrow. In a few minutes he reappeared and seemed again buried in contemplating the beauty of the scenery. Ere long another and a stronger blast swept through the trees, with a more threatening voice—bearing upon its wings a few withered leaves.

One of these fell close to the person of the marmot. The intimation was not to be mistaken. He gently descended to the horizontal attitude, crawled towards the unwelcome courier of decay, applied his nose to it for a moment, then, wheeling rapidly round, plunged suddenly into his hole and sent the dirt flying into the air by the rapid action of his fore-paws. I turned to the Exile of Connecticut, who had also watched this interesting scene, and remarked: “You propose to go to the prairies! It is summer with you yet, but I see that the leaves are beginning to turn: there are a few grey hairs gathering about your brow. Is it not time to choose your last resting place? to dig your last burrow?”

He felt the force of the query, and remained in thought for several minutes.

“If it were not for the next instalment, I think I should stay where I am till the neighborhood could grow up around us, and Mary could go to church and little John to school. But—I don’t know!—I think I shall have to sell out and flit in the spring, if I could find a purchaser! I’m young yet; and that little beast did not throw the dirt so high in the spring.”

Poor fellow! I hear that the ground reverted to the company two years afterwards; but whether he sold out and flitted with a full purse, or started on foot with his Mary and the children, and an axe on his shoulder, I have never heard.

SONNET.

Still he is absent though the buds of Spring

Bursting, have flung their freshness o’er the earth,

And all its brightest flowers have waked to birth

The perfume in their petals slumbering;—

The bright green leaves of Summer’s garnishing

Have blanched away;—the wild bird’s song of mirth

Is hushed into an echo, and his wing

Chill’d by the breath the north wind scatters forth:—

And yet the loved one is not with us, yet

He lingers in some foreign beauty’s bower,

While we the lonely, we in vain regret